Sweet Dreams
by Scorpicus
Summary: A slice of Claude's life at fifteen when he suffers an interruption from his life of books and study. Adventure through Frollo's subconcious mind. Book based. Complete.
1. The Ink Bottle

**A/N: **Rated T for mild infrequent swearing, Claude's voyeuristic tendencies and some rather lurid description. It should also be noted that the tone begins quite light and whimsically, but past the middle gets progressively darker, especially towards the end, in the penultamite chapter. Those that are sensitive to such things... consider yourselves warned. I also feel inclined to warn the reader that the structure to the fic is somewhat strange, but if you can't do bizarre narrative experiments on fan fic net, where can you? Oh, yes, and in my mind, apparently, the population of Paris speak like Londoners.

All that aside and without any further author ado, enjoy the fic.

**Sweet Dreams**

**The Ink Bottle**

Frollo groggily rolled over on the hard mattress. Once more he was not to be blessed with a dreamless sleep.

Face down, eyes blinked awake. Frollo rolled onto his back to find early morning sunlight spilling through a dormitory window. Light that meant only one thing to his fifteen year old self: He could read.

Immediately, Claude sat up.

Time not spent reading, when reading was possible, was time wasted. He rubbed one hand over his pasty face and cropped hair to banish any remaining disorientation of sleep, swinging his feet onto the cold floor without hesitation. Sitting upright and facing the rest of the hazily discernible room, his gaze fell on an older boy who was collapsed onto a second bed, Claude's unwanted room mate, Grégoire.

The nineteen year old was well rounded, due to constantly being well fed, with plump, ruddy cheeks, due to constantly being well drunk, and a mess of shaggy, sandy coloured hair. To Claude, Grégoire only served one useful purpose and that was to passively inform him, every morning, what day it was.

An untrained eye may have leapt to the conclusion that, due to the half empty bottle of wine still tightly grasped between Grégoire's fingers, last night was a Saturday, thus today must be a Sunday. However, Claude's eye was anything but untrained; the fact that the bottle was half full was exactly why last night _couldn't_ be a Saturday. A fact confirmed further since Grégoire seemed to have retained his dinner during last night's drinking. No, Claude reasoned, today couldn't be a Sunday. Further inspection of the sad attempt Grégoire had made of unlacing his boots, indicating moderately heavy drinking, told Claude that last night was in fact a Friday. Today was Saturday.

Claude smiled; he had a whole day to dedicate to reading.

Making a mental note not to leave any of his belongings in the path between the door and Grégoire's bed, to do so tonight would most likely lead to unpleasant cleaning of said belongings on Sunday, Claude stood up.

He was about to make his way past the comatosed Grégoire, when his gaze fell once again on the half full bottle of wine. It was the only cause that young Frollo would momentarily postpone learning and, as such, Claude carefully pried the vile bottle out of Grégoire's pudgy hand. The older boy remained motionless. He was in such a deep sleep Claude could have smashed the bottle over his head and he wouldn't have voiced an objection.

Regardless of this tempting thought, Claude walked across to the window, opened it, and poured the alcohol out onto the street below. Every last drop gone, Claude took the empty bottle back inside to deposit it with its owner. However, on turning to look at the sleeping Grégoire, Claude decided it was a much better idea to finish the job properly. He tossed the bottle out the window, smirking as it made a satisfying smash onto the pavement below.

A blurred second later, and Claude had washed, dressed and skipped breakfast. He was ready to begin the day's studying.

He trailed his finger over the spines of the various leather bound books that stood proud and erect on his shelf. Volumes of science just waiting to be absorbed, knowledge waiting to be learned; Claude subconsciously licked his lips at the thought.

But, which discipline should he dedicate his mind today?

Physics, philosophy, biology, theology, chemistry; he wanted to do it all. Unfortunately for Claude, he was limited by his inability to read multiple books simultaneously. He would have to choose...

His finger skipped past three volumes of Galen, already devoured; continued to leap scornfully over a book on astrology, read only to better disagree; paused momentarily over Geber's "Book of Stones", Persian alchemy as yet unread; before finally selecting a Greek book on mathematical principles that he had taken from the library only the day before.

He extracted the thick manuscript from the midst of the bookshelf with utmost care to place it on his parchment strewn desk. Taking a moment to lovingly caress the cover, he turned to the first page and breathed in the smell of wise, aged paper that he so adored. This ritual complete, he quickly located a stack of blank parchment and a quill, in order to note down and experiment with what the book was about to so graciously share with him.

The necessary preliminary procedures all aside, Claude eagerly bent his head to immerse himself fully in knowledge. Halfway down the first page, defining rational numbers, Claude scribbled a note onto his parchment, and yet the familiar sound of the quill didn't seem quite right.

_No ink._

Rolling his eyes at this obvious oversight, Claude located his inkwell, hiding under a page of Hebrew, to find it empty. He opened the drawer that contained his bottles of ink to find that this too was empty.

Claude's heart sank.

Furiously, he searched his desk for a single ink bottle, scattering parchment and belongings everywhere to no avail. Not giving up, Claude moved on to ransack Grégoire's desk - the only part of his side of the room that remained tidy due to its lack of use - to discover that the older boy had seemingly not purchased ink in weeks.

Claude let out a sound of irritation, a faint frown line appearing on his forehead. He would have to disrupt his blissful day of learning to buy ink, and to buy ink on a busy Saturday morning would mean at least an hour wasted. The faint frown line deepened at the thought. But it could not be helped – he could not study without writing and he could not write without ink.

It was then that Claude was struck with another sickening realisation: It was the second to last day of the month. The end of his allowance was nigh. Claude took his pouch from a drawer and spilled the few coins it contained onto the desk. Counting up the coins, he found that he was a few pennies short to buy new ink. Desperately hoping he had made a mistake, Claude counted the coins three times over to find that he was of course correct. His mind never made mistakes.

Claude Frollo had been born to an upper middle class family that earned a fair income due to the ownership of property. However, a fair income was reduced to no income once the fees for the University had been paid, resulting in a minuscule monthly allowance for Claude. Not that he resented this at all, Claude was strongly averse to spending money frivolously, just as his room mate was strongly averse to spending money thriftily, and his expenses largely consisted of only writing supplies and food. Claude always spent less on the latter to spend more on the former, skipping meals to be able to replenish his stock of parchment and ink was customary. Hunger could be ignored; his thirst for learning could not. However, even with the minimum amount of his allowance spent on the irritating activity of feeding himself, Claude always seemed to need more ink then he could afford.

Claude counted the coins for a fourth time. It didn't make any difference; he was still three pennies short of an ink bottle.

Yet he would never ask his parents for a larger allowance. Amongst the various reasons, it simply seemed impolite to request money from people he barely knew. Claude sighed; one day he would find a solution to the problem of money. Science could solve anything.

Behind him, Grégoire made a noise that was halfway between a snort and a slurp. Claude turned to look at the sleeping and drooling older boy for his eyes to catch on the stuffed purse that lay next to him. One corner of Claude's mouth twitched upwards; perhaps today his room mate could be useful twice...

Immediately, Catholicism tried to correct this thought with the phrase: "Thou shallt not steal". Claude downcast his eyes. But, he reasoned with himself, it wouldn't be stealing... he would simply be redirecting funds to a nobler cause. By removing three pennies from Grégoire's purse he was sparing them from being spent on sinful occupations. In fact, by taking the money, he would be directly saving Grégoire from sin. In that light, how could Claude pass up such a good deed?

He moved across the room to Grégoire's pouch of money. About to untie the cord that kept the pouch closed, Claude hesitated. Perhaps he should ask Grégoire first?

No, Grégoire simply wouldn't understand what was best for him. Claude had tried explaining similar logics to the older boy on many previous occasions, but he couldn't, or wouldn't, see sense. Besides, Grégoire would never realise if just three pennies went missing from his constantly over stuffed purse...

Claude loosened the cord and removed the money. Later, Grégoire would be thanking him for his kind generosity in saving his soul, Claude was sure of it. Slipping the coins safely into his own pouch, Claude grabbed the mathematics book and strode out the door. He may not have been able to read two books at once, but he had long ago mastered how to simultaneously read and walk.

Head bent down, chin upon his chest, Claude absorbed the first page while traversing the dormitory staircase. Completely oblivious as he passed another student on the stairs - a student who was well enough acquainted with Claude Frollo to know there was no point in attempting a "hello" - Claude turned to page four as the stairs morphed into the ground floor. Turning to page five, he walked through the entrance doors onto the hustle and bustle of the city streets.

On a Saturday morning, Paris was alive with its population. Everyone had somewhere to go and something to do, including the young scholar who wound his way through the faceless crowds without ever looking past the edges of his book.

Claude walked past the black smith, butchers, tavern, apothecary, shoemakers and bakery, his mind too preoccupied to take notice of his stomach's gurgling reaction to the smell of fresh bread. He walked around horse drawn carts and over the shite they left behind; he walked past street entertainers, jugglers, dancers and petty musicians; he passed by filth encrusted beggars, lame, blind and healthy, without giving neither a penny nor a glare. He ignored the clamour of market tradesmen, pushing all manner of goods from the home grown to the manufactured to the stolen. He made his way past stands of ripe tomatoes, sweet strawberries and fresh cherries, never sparing a glance to the stacks of succulent fruits. The sights, sounds and smells, delicious and revolting, of the Saturday morning Paris crush were lost to the student. Nothing existed to him except page fourteen of Greek Mathematical Principles. All else was reduced to a dream like haze of non existence.

Finally, Claude's legs had navigated him to the small corner shop that sold, amongst a variety of other goods, parchment, quills and ink. Head still firmly in his book, Claude pushed open the door to enter the murky surroundings of the shop, filled with a tight knot of featureless people, no doubt there to purchase that variety of other goods Claude considered insignificant. Regardless, Claude moved to join the back of the queue, oblivious as an older man cut in front of him - page twenty three was just too interesting for Claude to care.

"What you reading?"

_Consider a square with vertices of O, A, P, Q each with a length of one._ Easy, thought Claude. _Next, consider the diagonal OP, transferring its length to the line identifying the point p'. This abscissa of p', and the equivalent length of OP, does not correspond to any rational number. _But the line is drawn, Claude mused, there must be an existing number to measure it!

"I said what you reading?"

If only he had some dratted ink, then he could experiment with the principles the book described. And to think that he had wasted the last of it Friday evening writing on astrology, when-

Halfway through this thought, something poked Claude hard on the arm, breaking his academic reverie.

"I _said_ what you reading?"

His head still bent to his book, Claude moved his eyes up to look at the something that had spoken to find a scruffily dressed girl standing in front of him. He scowled and turned his back to her. Claude found people irritating, girls more so.

He started to read again, but hadn't got through another sentence before becoming aware of a head trying to peer over his shoulder.

"Looks borin' whatever it is."

Girls were irritating, this one especially so. Claude persevered to ignore her, but the girl's stupid comments had made him lose his place on the page...

"Don't you talk?"

At this, he let out an irked sound of consternation. Dark eyebrows knitted, the faint frown line appearing on his forehead, Claude turned to face her. Between subconsciously gritted teeth, he growled, "It is not boring."

The girl smiled gleefully at getting him to break his silence. She was about his age, perhaps a little younger, with dark hair pulled back in a loose, messy ponytail that seemingly refused to obey a brush. However, the spattering of grime on her cheeks implied that it was likely her and not the hair that refused to obey said brush. The grime was a tell tale sign that whatever street she lived on, it was most likely the "dodgy end". Claude continued to glare at her. She seemed to oddly resemble a cat who had fallen down a chimney...

Her coarse voice abruptly awoke him from this reflection, "What's it about then?"

Claude's scowl deepened at having his thoughts interrupted. Likewise, the girl's smile burst into a grin. Claude got the feeling that she was fully aware she was annoying him, and that she was enjoying every second of it. In a response to her question that didn't directly involve interacting with another human being, he held up the cover, knowing she wouldn't understand the title that, like the entire book, was written in Greek.

Sure enough, as the girl glanced at the cover, her eyes momentarily portrayed blank miscomprehension, before quickly turning back to look at him. Claude's scowl turned into a smirk; he did enjoy being more intellectual then others.

"You really don't like talkin', do you?" the girl said, neatly avoiding the issue of literacy.

As if to confirm this accusation, Claude again turned his back to the girl and retreated to the diagonal line that confused Pythagoras. He lowered his head further into the book. If he could block out the clamour of the whole of Paris, then he could certainly block out this silly girl.

The silly girl persisted, "It looks like a thousand pages."

"… Six hundred and twelve," he corrected under his breath.

He apparently did not speak under his breath enough as his indignant muttering only prompted the girl to speak again, "So what's it about then?"

Clearly, she couldn't understand Greek, nor know when she wasn't wanted. Claude's head was bowed so far into page twenty three it would have been impossible to read unless he was long sighted yet, in the corner of his vision, he was acutely aware of the girl moving to stand in front of him again.

"So?"

Claude continued to respond with silence. She also responded without words, poking him on the forehead to cause a second faint frown line to join the first.

"So?"

Claude had the irrational urge to poke her back, but he smothered it, instead letting out an exasperated sigh of annoyance, "If I tell you, will you go away?"

"Prob'ly not," the girl giggled. Claude scowled.

"Then I will not tell you," he said with moody stubbornness.

"Then I ain't going away," she replied, equally stubborn. This girl was nauseatingly childish Claude thought, as yet another man pushed in front of him in the queue without his notice.

Finally, before she decided to poke him again, Claude gave in, "Mathematics."

The girl laughed.

"What you reading a book on that for? It's useless. And borin'."

Claude's thick eyebrows dragged together as if someone had just slung an insult at him. The notion that mathematics was useless was a slur Claude could not let pass.

"Mathematics is _not_ useless!" he began to remonstrate, "It is the backbone of everything! All things are founded, created and understood by it. Good decisions are always based in mathematical principle and all problems solved by it. If there was no mathematics, then there would be no logic, no science, no anything," Claude spoke, his voice laced with a fevered eagerness. Finishing his explanation, Claude was surprised to notice that the girl actually seemed to be considering his words.

"That's bollocks," Claude's cheeks tinted pink at the phrase, "If it's the 'backbone of everything' how come I got out of bed, ate breakfast and am talkin' to you without doing no sums?"

Claude rolled his eyes. The girl, like everyone else, just couldn't understand...

"You here to buy things?"

Claude, whose eyes were back inside page twenty three, ignored her. She put her hand over his book to force him to listen, "Cause people keep pushing in front of you. At this rate you ain't never going to get to the front. Not 'till closing time."

At her words, and after a second spent staring blankly at the hand on his book, Claude looked up to the throng of people around him. Since he'd last taken notice of them, the mass of bodies had definitely multiplied and yet he was still standing at the back of the mob masquerading as a queue. Giving a sidelong glance and frown at the girl, he took a step forward to close the gap between himself and the man in front of him, who certainly wasn't there a few moments ago.

Before returning to the book, Claude's eyes slipped to the girl to find her grinning at him with an irritating, triumphant air that he tried to disperse by glaring at her. It didn't work.

"Don't you want to know my name?"

His eyes still fixed mutinously on her, he responded tersely, "No."

"I bet its nicer then yours."

"No name is better then any other. They are all simply meaningless labels people use to identify themselves," as Claude spoke, he moved along in the queue, the girl following him alongside.

"Y'know, you ain't half odd."

Claude grimaced inwardly. If he wasn't 'half odd' that meant he was either very odd or slightly odd, and Claude strongly suspected he knew which of the alternatives the girl was referring to. Everyone considered him to be odd, most of them told him so and the ones that didn't, thought it. Luckily, Claude didn't care what other people thought and, if he had it his way, he never would.

"So what's your name?" the girl asked.

Claude kept silent, willing her with all the prowess of his mind to go away. Yet she remained, her mouth clearly wanting to twitch up into a smile as she said, "Hasn't no one given you a label yet, book boy?"

Before he could answer, most likely with a glare, Claude finally found himself at the front of the queue, the brittle, old man at the counter asking him for his order. Claude blinked, for a second having to recollect why he came into the shop in the first place, before supplying the word, "Ink."

Once served, Claude turned back around to find that the girl had slipped away out of sight. Clearly, she didn't care to find out his name after all. His eyes started to scan the crowd for her, when he realised that being left alone was exactly the result he had spent the last fifteen minutes wishing for. Claude turned to chapter two of his book, bent his head and strode out of the shop back onto the crowded streets of Paris.

Frollo's body twitched.

Claude continued to swiftly walk, the pages of the book and Paris melting away to an inky blackness.


	2. The Gypsy

**The Gypsy**

She danced.

Twirling skirts and hips to the shake of a tambourine, her legs weaved the floor, her arms caressed the air. She spun, leapt and flew upon the stage, trinkets, bracelets shimmering an angel's gold in the sun. Bare feet striking the ground to the beat, her raven hair swept free with every movement, swooping wild across her skin as the gliding feathers of a bird. Twisting, turning, she arched her back impossibly to the tightly packed crowd, tongues lolling out of open mouths, all of them with the exception of one.

He watched her; mouth firmly closed, yet eyes on fire.

She was beyond beautiful.

She was a Goddess.

Her dance climaxed, one leg raised near vertical, green skirts slipping back to reveal the smooth, dark skin of her thigh. The crowd whooped. His breath left his lungs in a shudder. Leg still raised high, she froze in position; the only movement her hand as it made an agonizingly slow descent from her ankle down, the sight begetting over enthusiastic wolf whistles from the crowd. He bit down hard on his bottom lip. As the hand reached her knee, she bent forward, her leg to slice the air as she began the dance again, feet pounding the beat with an animal ferocity.

Lowering his head to avert his eyes, the priest's collar a strangulation around his neck, he breathed out then in before quickly twisting his head back for the chance glance beneath her skirts. Another swirling leap, a flash of flesh, and his gaze snapped to the sky above. Looking up, he saw something that resembled the shadow of a bat bent over the roof of a tall building. Head falling once again to be level with the square - the bat-shadow didn't keep his gaze for long - he found the crowds had dissolved into nothingness. The square was empty.

Empty except for the gypsy girl.

Their eyes locked.

Bewitchment was branded upon his soul.

Performing only for him, she twisted a full circle, hands coiling in and out above her head, body gyrating through her hips. Finally, her circle complete, she leaned forward over the wooden stage to extend one snaking hand towards him.

It beckoned him closer with a finger.

His heart leapt into his mouth. He bit down hard upon it for all of Paris to dissolve into hot white light, his soul burning a branded black, seared with the form of the still twirling gypsy, last of the scene to melt into a vacuum canvas of nothingness…

A moment later and Claude found himself alone in a dormitory. The sounds of the crowd, the goat and the tambourine gone to be replaced with an early morning silence only to be broken by the slurpy snores of sleeping Grégoire.

Claude blinked, adjusting to the new reality. The dream, whatever it was, had evaporated.

He was seated at his desk, his head resting on its side, slumped, like it had many times before, into an open book. A second and a low, sleepy groan later, and Claude attempted to sit up… to find his cheek stickily glued to the page with ink.

Claude swore in Greek

It seemed that during his sleep he had managed to knock over his - unfortunately placed - inkwell, spilling the last of his ink all over his book and face. Slowly, carefully, he peeled the book from his cheek, wincing at the sound of every rip. After inspecting the damage – tragic, the book was on chemistry – Claude moved on to check his bottle of ink.

Empty.

Claude flicked the glass bottle in irritation. The past week had swirled by in a daze of academic reverie. Indiscernible days of books, lectures and writing, their existence only proved by the increased depths of Claude's mind; the time spent never left memories, only knowledge. Claude was happy. The dream of complete comprehension of all came closer with each book he read. Greek Mathematical Principles was long since devoured, volumes two and three quickly following it in Claude's gluttonous diet of science. Saturday had turned to Sunday, Sunday had turned to Monday and Monday had turned to Tuesday; more days, more books, more study, all swirling past, until it was Saturday again, and once more Claude was to find himself short of the dratted, and all too necessary, substance of ink.

Without wasting any more time, Claude reached into his pouch: This time he had the coins ready and waiting to pay for a new bottle. Grabbing a book on chemical elements that wasn't newly decorated in ink, Claude strode out of his dormitory to walk the familiar route to the corner shop, ignoring Paris as usual. Reaching the wooden shop door, he was about to push it open when he stopped frozen to the spot.

_Branded bewitchment of the soul…_

In the very deepest corner of his stomach, something stirred. An unexplained, tangled fluttering, almost like the sensation of anticipation he got when about to embark on a new book. Almost, but not quite.

Whatever it was, Claude suppressed it. Unchecked emotions only served to be a distraction but, with each passing year, he was getting more and more adept at smothering them. He entered the shop and stood at the back of the thronging queue, flipping to page seventy eight as he did so.

"Book boy! You're back!"

The coarse voice penetrated Claude's otherwise impenetrable concentration, the tangled fluttering in the pit of his stomach returning with a squeeze. He didn't look up, didn't even move except for his knitting eyebrows, yet any doubt of who the voice belonged to was removed when he felt his arm being poked.

It was _her_ again.

He slowly looked up from his book to find her grubby, smiling face before him that he had assumed - hoped - he would never see again. The tangled fluttering promptly left to be replaced by irritation mixed with a premature expectation of humiliation.

"What have you done to yer face?"

Claude rolled his eyes; the humiliation had arrived quicker then expected.

"You've got blue all over it, book boy, on one side and bits of paper too," she reached out a hand for further examination, which Claude immediately swatted away. The passing of a week, however quick, clearly hadn't made her any less annoying.

"It is just ink," ink that a small part of him was wishing he'd taken the time to wash off.

"Shouldn't you know by now, that ink ain't for drinking?"

Claude's teeth ground together at her mocking tone, "I did not drink it… it just spilled."

"Of course, it did," she replied, the mocking tone still all too present. Claude's omnipresent scowl deepened. The girl, however, was not to be put off, no matter how unwanted her presence.

"Y'know, you keep frowning like that, and the wind'll change and your face will get stuck like that."

Claude continued to scowl. He went back to looking at his book, but nevertheless replied, "That is ridiculous."

"It ain't. My Dad says it all the time, and he knows things."

"Obviously, your father knows nothing," Claude responded bluntly, causing the girl to let out a sound of indignation as his remark caused offence. Finally, he had managed it.

"You haven't met him. How'd you know?" she challenged, "He knows how to beat me and my brother's black 'n' blue with a shoe."

"That has no relation to whether the wind has an effect on one's face, which it does not," Claude scoffed, head in his book, refusing to look at her.

"That's just what you think. When your face gets stuck, I'm goin' to be the first to laugh."

The line appeared on Claude's forehead, but he did not respond. It was pointless to argue with a simpleton, and especially pointless to argue with this girl.

"You have any brothers or sisters, book boy?" she asked.

"No."

"It shows. I'm the second oldest in my family," she said proudly, "My Dad wanted me to be a boy, and got so depressed when I wasn't that my Mum squeezed out six baby brother's to make it up to him. She did such a good job of makin' it up to him that she died in the process. My Dad was so happy; he now spends every night at the tavern tellin' everyone just how happy he is," she finished, all the time using a tone of voice as if she was commenting on the pleasantness of the weather. Claude looked up from his book.

For a moment, neither said anything. The moment did not last long.

"What's your Dad like?" she asked.

Claude thought for a moment, "He does not like taverns." It was one of the few things he knew about his father. He had barely spoken to the man after spending almost all his years away from home for his education.

"Doesn't like taverns? Ain't he happy?"

Claude didn't reply. This time, not because he didn't want to speak, but because he didn't know an answer. Not knowing an answer to something did not sit well with Claude, especially considering the subject matter, and he fell into gloomy reflection, facial features again arranging themselves into a scowl.

Away from his reality, deep in his thoughts, the girl leant forward and whispered loudly and conspiratorially into his ear, "Watch out for that wind!"

He jumped. A furious blush appeared on his cheeks, her unexpected closeness causing him to take an abrupt step backwards. The proximity of both her and her voice had given the tangled fluttering a sudden reign over his stomach as the girl burst into laughter at his surprised reaction. Claude's frown deepened with the red flush: He hated to be laughed at.

_Soul seared white…_

"What exactly are you doing in here?" he growled angrily at her while she continued to laugh.

"What am I doing?" the girl spoke between giggles, wiping a tear from her eye, "What're you doing? You ain't queuing to buy stuff as far as I can see."

Cheeks still flushed, Claude looked around to find that people had again been taking advantage of his obliviousness to push in front of him in the queue. He looked down briefly at his book. He hadn't been reading it, and yet he had still been distracted from his surroundings…

Claude's gaze moved up to glower at the giggling girl in front of him.

"Tell me, why are you here?"

"Book boy, I work here," she stated plainly as if this was obvious, pointing to an abandoned broom in a previously unseen corner of the shop.

He regarded her through narrowed eyes, "No, you do not."

"Yep, I do."

"Then why are you not working?"

She smiled craftily, "Cause the shop owner ain't here. He spends all his time out flirtin' with the flower seller in the square. While he ain't here, I can do what I like. Old Joe," she pointed to the wispy, white haired man behind the counter, "don't care."

Claude let out a sound of exasperation at her blatant disregard for language rules, "Were you never taught how to speak properly?"

"I'm using words, ain't I?"

"Am I not," he corrected.

"Ain't I."

Claude rolled his eyes at her non-conforming ignorance before realising that he was finally face to face with "Old Joe" at the front of the queue.

"Young maître, what 'ave you done to your face?"

Peasants, Claude thought, were all the same.

While purchasing his ink and parchment, it didn't pass Claude's notice that Old Joe, hunched, aged and possessing a liver spot for each of his many wrinkles, was directing a reproachful look somewhere behind Claude. To say that Old Joe didn't care about the lazy working habits of his fellow shop workers was obviously not quite true.

Claude watched out of the corner of his eye as the girl stuck her tongue out at the wispy man's reprimanding gaze, Old Joe responding with a phlegmy grumbling at the back of his sagging throat. Whoever the manager was, he clearly had bad taste in employees – one, incapable of keeping younger workers in check, the other, incapable of working. Not to mention lazy, uncouth and insufferable.

_Beckoned closer… _

After making his purchase, Claude turned around to find the insufferable still present, peering curiously at him, "So what do you do? Do you work someplace?"

"No, I study at the University."

"At the University? You a rich kid, book boy?"

Claude felt the few remaining coins that resided alone in his pouch, "No."

The girl scrutinised him for a moment, no doubt taking in his well worn jerkin and boots, "No," she agreed, "You're just a book boy."

"Better a book boy, then a shop girl."

She laughed, "That ain't right. I work and get paid money. You go to school and get nothing."

"I receive knowledge. That is worth more then the world itself," at the mention of his beloved sister of science, his only sibling, Claude realised that he was voluntarily wasting time talking to a girl instead of engaging in his quest for absolute learning. The realisation that distraction was causing him to turn away from life's true purpose, however briefly, caused the bottom to drop out of Claude's stomach, and yet that unexplainable, inexplicable tangled flutter persisted to churn…

"Knowledge ain't worth shite. You can't eat it, can't wear it, can't live in it. With money, you can have all three," Claude was no longer listening to her - what he would no doubt consider - sacrilegious remarks. His mind preoccupied with disciplining itself for this momentary, unheard of blip in focus, his eyes, glaring icy daggers at what he perceived to be the cause of it.

"I have to go," he said abruptly, taking a step back from the girl.

"You do? Why?"

He didn't reply, face furrowed, striding away towards the door. Just as it was about to close, he heard her voice call out, "See you later, book boy!"

Not if he could help it, Claude thought, rapidly putting as much space as he could between himself and the ink shop, in order to make it back to the safety of his dormitory, room and book shelf.

Frollo tossed in his sleep.


	3. The Priest

**The Priest**

Claude couldn't focus.

He sat down to continue his book on chemical elements, to find himself, halfway down a page, reading the same sentence over and over, his mind wanting to wander elsewhere. When he wasn't looking, his thoughts meandered away from the text of chemistry and onto things said, not said, could be said and things blundered. With determination he went back to reading, his eyes narrowing at the page as his mind brought forth the image of himself jumping in surprise at her whispered tease…

He changed books to philosophy. It didn't help. The days churned by, and still his thoughts strayed off the path of knowledge and into irrationality, cringing inwardly at the thought that she had made him blush. All the while, he watched as the level of ink decreased down the bottle; the feeling of foreboding taking hold as his ink supply drew ever nearer to its end.

With effort he bent his head to the book, staring at the Latin characters, figures and formulas until they all blurred together into a hazy blanket of nothingness…

Claude stood motionless in the street.

He was surrounded by people: Men, some underpaid, others over fed, merchants, soldiers, labourers, entertainers, robbers, thieves and beggars. Women: Mothers with more children than their husbands could afford, young girls doomed to become them. People old and young; from arthritic, doddery old men on the very edge of kicking the bucket, to children with the sole occupation of aggravating their parents and others spent too long without. Middle, working class and beneath, they jostled, gossiped and loitered, all crushed together in the filthy Paris streets.

Claude ignored them all, but one.

A man, only a few meters ahead of Claude, dressed all in black was weaving through the crowds, head bent to the ground. Claude stared fixedly at the man's back. For seemingly no reason at all, Claude found his gaze inexplicably chained to the man and, before he could walk any further away, Claude indulged in the equally inexplicable impulse to follow him.

They made their way through the crowd together, only a few meters keeping them apart, Claude trotting to keep up with the man's long, purposeful strides. All the while the scholar continued to stare fixedly at the man's back, both man and boy oblivious to all that went on around them.

As Claude grew a little closer to the man in black, he realised from his dress and bald head that he must be a priest. The fact that the man completely ignored the pleadings of a cripple in the gutter proved, without doubt, the man's vocation as a Man of God. Claude could only see his back, but he could tell the priest's head was bent upon his breast in a state of deep contemplation Claude himself knew only too well.

"Sorcerer! Sorcerer!"

Claude's gaze sprung, as if released, to the source of the shout: A dumpy woman standing in a shop doorway pointing towards the priest. Claude's gaze snapped back to the man in black who made absolutely no movement to acknowledge the woman's taunt. Surely, Claude thought, words such as that could not have been directed at a priest?

Yet, the woman's shout seemed to give others in the crowd similar, charming ideas as another yelled, "Where's your demon?" and another replied, "He's left it at the cathedral taking mass!"

Claude looked again to the priest, yet still he made no response. He either didn't hear the cries or was ignoring them, head still bent, lost in his thoughts.

More cries from the crowd, and a young girl, rustling her skirts, ran up to the priest, chanting the whisper, "In bed with the Devil! In bed with the Devil!"

Still the priest gave all the reaction of a table leg. Claude was half convinced he must be deaf to be so ignorant of what was going on around him. Whoever this priest was, Claude thought, he was clearly unpopular with his Parisian congregation.

However, the masses soon tired of baiting the priest - whose attention was ever fixated on the ground - for him to continue walking in peace. Claude continued to follow. The priest seemed to be heading towards Notre-Dame at speed, but as he made it to the square in front of the great cathedral, he turned his back to it in order to join a tight knot of people thronging around something in the square.

In the midst of the crowd, the priest came to an abrupt halt. Curiosity ever rising, Claude elbowed his way through the loitering bodies to stand directly behind the man in black who, Claude realised, had finally raised his head to stare in the same direction as the cheering, leering crowd.

Claude attempted to see what everyone was gawking at, but the priest, who was a foot taller then Claude, blocked his view. Claude stood on his toes to try to see around the man, yet he could not see past the sight of his balding head. All Claude could make out were the bleatings of a goat and the sound of a tambourine...

"Maître Frollo, perhaps you would choose to listen when addressed," an Italian professor boomed at him in Latin. Claude started; his focus on the lecture had slipped quite some time ago, imagining ways to wipe that grin off her silly face.

"Do you have an answer? Or shall I assume you have no interest in the topic?" the professor continued to thunder, voice reverberating around the hall for all to hear. Claude, who had been awake and yet asleep, had no idea what the professor had asked him. This was clear to all a hundred boys in the hall who began to snigger at the fact that, for once, Claude Frollo had no answer. As Claude continued staring silently at the professor, trying to discern what had been asked, the sniggers multiplied in both quantity and volume, mutterings and asides accompanying them, until one boy at the back called out, "Frollo the Fool!" and the hall erupted into a din of voluptuous anarchy.

"Silence!" the Italian yelled above them all, cracking his stick down on the front bench repeatedly to bring the perceived lecture back to some sort of order.

"Could you repeat the question, please?"

The laughter broke out again, even more raucous then before, the sound vibrating back and forth through Claude's head. Again the professor began to whack his stick on the bench, yelling and gesticulating for the hall to be quiet. Eventually, they obeyed, if only for the professor's well earned reputation that he was not one to cross.

"If there is anyone here who does not wish to listen, then they can leave now," no one moved, "They pay me whether you attend or not so, if you are not interested, it is a nice summer day out there, perhaps you think your time would be better served frolicking in the park," at this remark, the sniggers momentarily re-emerged before being hushed by a sweeping arm movement, the Italian's gaze panning across the hall before again settling to rest on Claude.

"And that advice also applies to you Maître Frollo, if you cannot answer my question, I will assume you have no interest in the topic being discussed," the professor boomed up at him.

Claude didn't point out that the last thing he wanted to do was frolic in the park...

Claude bit his lip. This was all her fault.

In a life spent cloistered at the University, Claude hardly ever came into contact with women, but simply watching Grégoire and the other student's fascination with them was enough for Claude to know he wanted nothing to do with them. Ever. He would allow nothing to come between himself and science… himself and religion. Yet the high, solid wall of abstinence, that he had spent the last couple of years constructing, seemed to be having its foundations undermined before assembly was even complete. But, Claude thought – knew – he could over come this: He would avoid that girl permanently and crush the tangled fluttering that came with her.

Time fell away for the next morning to take the last of his ink. He had tried to make it last, writing as little as possible, smallest hand writing and Heaven forbid any blots. Yet still the end had come: His ink was gone. Again, he searched Grégoire's desk fruitlessly to find not a single bottle. Claude knew without asking that no boy in the dormitory would lend him some. To lend Claude ink was to lend Grégoire wine – you would never see either again.

But, Claude would not return to the corner shop.

Still, he needed ink…

From the bed in the far corner, Grégoire let out one of his slurpy snores. Usually, the noise would have irked Claude however, that morning, it instead brought a small smile to tug his lips: A solution had been presented to his predicament.

Claude approached the slumbering nineteen year old, "Grégoire?"

But Grégoire was far away in the land of dreams. Claude poked the boy's swollen belly, speaking the name louder, "Grégoire!"

Still the boy didn't move. Claude gave him a few slaps to the face for Grégoire to mumble something about the joys of twin sisters, but to remain ever asleep. Not having time for gentle approaches, Claude took hold of one of Grégoire's arms and yanked him out of bed onto the floor with a thud.

It worked: "Mentula diffutūta!"

"Grégoire, I need you to do something for me," Claude began, interrupting the stream of swearing that was half directed at Claude and half at sunlight. Apart from slurred Latin profanities, the older boy did not respond to Claude's request, lying on the floor in a state of hung-over, post drunk befuddlement. Finally, in an unsteady attempt at consciousness, Grégoire used Claude's jerkin and the side of the bed to pull himself upright.

"Are you listening to me? I need you to-" Grégoire smothered the rest of the sentence with a large, pudgy hand placed firmly over Claude's mouth.

"Shhhh… No."

The two utterances were all Grégoire could manage before releasing Claude and slumping backwards heavily onto the bed. Claude couldn't tell whether Grégoire's "No" was a response to whether he was listening or not, a response to whether Grégoire would do him a favour or simply a general sentiment. He persisted.

"Grégoire, I need you to go out and buy ink for me," Claude said, tone far more an order then a request.

Grégoire let out a long groan at the sound of speech. After a moment, he spoke, articulating words with slow, rough effort, "Manners Frollo. Do you not consider how un-gentlemanly it is to wake up a fellow student after he has clearly enjoyed a full night of revelry and – God, is it the morning?"

Grégoire blinked blearily at the rays of early morning sunlight spilling through the window, rolling over on the bed to face the soothing wall. Yet, Claude was not going to let him be, "I want you to buy me some ink."

"Here," Grégoire threw his purse over his shoulder at Claude, "You can pay me back later."

"No, it is not money. I need you to go into the shop and purchase the ink for me," Claude explained to Grégoire, who still had his back to him on the bed, "You can purchase some for yourself while you are in there."

"I do not need ink, why can you not do it yourself?"

A faint blush crept onto Claude's pale cheeks, "I… I am busy."

"As you can plainly see, so am I," Gregorie's agreeableness was fading fast. Not that it was ever there to begin with, Claude thought with a frown.

"No, you are not, you are just sleeping. And you do need ink," Claude added in a disapproving tone.

"Frollo, I have agreed with myself to stay in bed the whole day and, on my honour, it is an agreement that I will not break. Least of all for my odd, little room mate Claude," as if to show the binding nature of this agreement, Grégoire plumped up his pillow and shuffled further under the covers. Claude did not take the hint, temper rising at Grégoire's lack of cooperation.

"This is important. Do you not understand? I need ink to study!"

At Claude's raised voice, Grégoire stuck out an arm to push him away from the bed, shoving his head under his pillow to block out the fifteen year old's voice, "If it is so important then do it yourself."

"I… cannot."

"Frollo, you are not busy unless you are studying. You have no ink, you cannot study, thus you are not busy. Do it yourself," Grégoire said, emphasising the last three words as if that was the end of it. Claude knew he had lost the battle. Mutinously, he glowered down at the older boy for daring to not do as Claude Frollo wished. Alas, at fifteen, Claude's stares of penetration didn't have quite the dominating effect he intended them.

Grégoire peeked out from under his pillow to see Claude's scowling expression and let out a laugh, "You can glare at me all you want, I am not moving from this bed."

Fuming, Claude growled out his annoyance, took a book from his desk and strode from the room, slamming the door as hard as he could manage, satisfied when he heard a string of groaned swearing on the other side.

Cursing Grégoire to spend the rest of his life at a monastery, Claude marched down the dormitory staircase out into Paris and the summer heat. Cracking open the book, Claude glared at words while formulating a new plan. There was nothing else for it: He would just have to trudge across the city until he found another shop that sold ink. He vaguely knew the location of such a shop, but it would take him over an hour to walk there and another hour to walk back, which meant at least two hours wasted… And it was all that girl's fault.

Walking as quickly as possible, Claude cursed the girl to spend the rest of her life at a nunnery. Or to be employed by a brute of a manager that didn't get distracted from business by flower sellers in the square.

The thought faded as Claude realised he had made it to the street that would – eventually – lead to the alternative ink shop, and away from the corner shop that had just come into view. He took a step down the street, a step towards the second ink shop, when a realisation hit him: He was being ridiculous.

He was going to lose two hours of time that could be otherwise spent with knowledge in order to avoid a girl, a silly, bothersome, bad-mannered girl, who couldn't read Greek nor understand mathematics and was causing Claude colossal inconvenience. The thought of the obnoxious expression that would no doubt slip onto her face if she knew the – quite literal – lengths he was going to in order to avoid her, made Claude turn around and head back towards the corner shop.

It was _his_ shop; his shop to buy writing supplies from because it was the cheapest, closest and all round best place to go to buy ink, quills and parchment. He was not going to be prevented from purchasing his supplies there just because of an irritating girl. Claude smirked: If she dared to come near him, he would simply tell her how much he disliked, loathed and despised her, tell her to go away and get back to sweeping the floors. That would put her firmly in her place.

He neared the door. Once more the unwanted, but now familiar squelching in the very bottom of his stomach had started to take hold. Claude paused at the door, trying to suppress the unpleasant feeling and yet it absolutely refused to obey. He persevered; it wouldn't listen. During this struggle, Claude turned his head to the left, as if looking away from the shop would help, for his gaze to fall on a cart halted next to the side wall of the shop. The cart seemed to be in the process of being unloaded, only a few crates left inside, and yet there was no one around except for the horse.

He turned back to face the door of the shop. Squelching stomach or not, Claude entered.

Head down towards his book, he joined the back of the queue, breath held as he waited for the girl to appear before him.

Time passed. He waited.

And waited.

And waited.

"What would yer like?" Old Joe asked at the counter.

She wasn't here.

Claude frowned, handing over coins and tucking the newly acquired ink bottle carefully into his pouch. He had assumed she worked everyday the shop was open. Perhaps that was not the case?

Claude scanned the crowd of blank faces, but she was nowhere to be seen. In the corner, a man who Claude recognised as the shop owner was talking affably to another man, "She's an old horse, you say?"

"Yep, I was surprised she made it 'ere in the heat. Would've thought she'd kicked the bucket on route."

Frowning further, Claude paid little attention to the men as he squeezed past to get to the exit. He should have been contented with her absence and yet… he wasn't. The fact that he wasn't content, when he should have been content, brought a frown to his lips. Pushing open the shop door, Claude stepped back onto the hot streets to come to an abrupt halt.

He had found her.


	4. The Bat

**The Bat**

Eyes opened gently, then fluttered to a close.

He had found her.

Leaning against the wagon, red faced, bathed in sweat and grimier then usual, she seemed in a state of utter exhaustion. Worn out, she didn't notice his presence, her gaze fixed on the few remaining crates on the cart, eyeing them furiously as if doing so would cause them to move themselves. The wooden countenances of the crates did not react.

"You shouldn't stare, it's rude."

Claude blinked. She had moved her furious eyes to glare at him as if it was his fault the crates weren't cowering to her will.

"I was not staring."

"Yes, you was," she muttered, turning back to glare at the crates; it seemed, today, she wasn't in the mood to pester him on the value of mathematics. Dejectedly, she reached out to begin to tug one of the heavy boxes off the cart. The sight – he was still staring – caused something utterly different to twist at Claude's stomach.

Pity.

"Would you like help?"

She paused for a moment.

"You can hold doors."

Regardless, Claude put his book down on the cart and picked up the largest of the crates. She didn't argue, picking up the smaller one. The girl looked at him for a moment, before motioning her head in the direction behind her, "Come on then. And don't let Monsieur Corbin see you."

"… The shop owner?"

"He doesn't want people helpin' me. Old Joe - the sod - told him I was slackin' off and now he says that if I want this weeks wages I've got to make up for it. Make up for it by unloading this bleedin' cart by meself," she said, adding the occasional profanity as if it made her situation any better. Claude didn't respond.

She led the way around to the back door of the shop, up flights of steps and to a rickety ladder leading to a loft and the destination of the boxes. She turned to him, about to speak, when Claude broke his pensive silence to blurt out, "I dislike you."

For a split second she looked as if someone had just slapped her across the face, before descending into laughter, "No, you don't!"

"Intensely. I dislike you intensely, utterly. You are annoying, you are childish, you do not listen, you laugh at me continuously, you cannot speak properly… and you don't understand mathematics! Nor reading, nor science, nor knowledge of any type, or anything else," Claude ranted at her, still holding the crate. His outburst only seemed to amuse her further.

"Do you want me to hold the ladder for you?" she spoke, unfazed.

"No."

Rant interrupted and the steam that he had been storing up against her somewhat dissipated, Claude had no more words. He began to climb, using one hand to balance the crate on his shoulder, the other to grip the wooden rungs. Progressing precariously upwards, halfway he looked down to find that she was once again disobeying him, holding the ladder when he'd told her not to.

Continuing to stiffly climb - ladders are not a simple task when you spend all day seated reading books - he muttered under his breath, "Go away and sweep the floors," but he knew she couldn't hear him.

One final exertion and he had made it to the top rung, off loading the crate from his shoulder to the floorboards with a careless crash.

"Watch it!" the girl called up to him, beginning to climb the ladder herself, and in a manner far nimbler then him. Panting, droplets of sweat upon his brow, Claude sat down on the crate as she emerged on the ladder. After placing her box carefully next to the others, she moved across to where he sat, giving him a push for Claude to move up and make room for her. He quickly shifted to the other side, putting his back to her and leaning his chin on his hand.

After a long moment, she asked, "If you dislike me, then why did you help me?"

He didn't reply.

"If you dislike someone you kick mud in their face and laugh at 'em, you don't help them," she said simply. It was almost an argument based on logic, Claude thought, yet still he kept silent. The urge to start ranting at her again was mixed with other less explicable urges that wanted him to move back, closer to her; this muddle leaving him in a state of inactivity, instincts that had been forced to lay dormant, slowly awakening…

"Y'know, book boy, you're very odd."

Finally, he responded, releasing a sound of semi amused bitterness, "More then half odd?"

"Yep. You ain't like any boy I've ever met. And I've met lots of 'em, I've got seven brothers," she said, pausing for a moment to think, "Although, none of 'em want you to ever hold the ladder either, so maybe you ain't that different."

Claude wasn't consoled by the fact that he was apparently very odd whilst simultaneously being the same as all other boys. While he was gloomily reflecting this, he became aware that the girl had slid herself to sit directly next to him on the crate.

Their shoulders gently nudged together.

Instinctively, he leant back to keep his distance, then, just as instinctively, he leaned again towards her. Head still slightly turned away, he gazed at her close up, her curves and skin reddened from the heat, the closeness of her turning his stomach not to butterflies, but to a hornets nest. As she seemed to realise that he was looking at her an almost devious smile appeared on her lips – Claude promptly flicked his eyes away to the direction where his turned head should have been looking. Yet out of the corner of his eye, he saw the girl slowly lean her head towards his own…

Claude leapt up. Abruptly he had been struck by a realisation: His hands were empty. The hornets nest dying in his stomach, Claude's eyes scanned the low space of the loft: It wasn't there.

He started to pace across the floorboards, searching but not finding, his movements confusing the girl, "What are you doing?"

The tone in her voice made Claude glance her way; her expression was unmistakably ruffled. Ignoring her, Claude walked a full circle around the crate before spluttering with a note of almost panic, "It's… it's gone!"

"What?"

"My book! It's gone!"

"Oh…" the girl said, her tone had quickly changed to sly amusement. Claude's eyes flicked towards her to find that familiar crafty smile pasted onto her face.

"If you know where it is, you had better tell me right now," he growled, shaking an ordering finger at her. The girl, however, was not to be intimidated.

"Pfft… Or what?"

"Or I'll- I'll-"

She interrupted him, "Admit that you like me."

"What?"

"Say it, and I'll tell you where it is."

Claude glowered down at her, laying upon her his most penetrating stare, teeth grinding together for added effect. Yet the only reaction it extracted was for the girl to stubbornly cross her arms over her chest.

"Go on," she chided.

"I despise you."

"Then why did you help me?"

"Because… because…" it was beyond Claude to express it in words. Finally he managed, "Because you needed help."

"Then you don't despise me," she said, a smile teasing her lips.

Claude scowled, "Yes… no… I-"

"Admit it, bookless boy," she took a moment to grin, "You like me."

Claude glared at her, letting out a deep, almost growled breath as she met his eyes undaunted. Finally he snapped out, "Fine."

"Fine what?"

"Fine, give me my book."

The girl, grinning broadly, wagged a finger at him, "Ah, ah, ah, not 'til you say it proper."

Claude let out an exasperated scoff, running his hand over his dark brow. The girl sat waiting with a mock imperious expression on her face as Claude made a show of rolling his frowning eyes, and muttering something unintelligible.

It did not satisfy her, who indicated he should speak louder by putting a hand to her ear. Claude's scowl deepened, he was sure he hated her more then ever.

"I like you."

He didn't see her triumphant grin; Claude's own words had caused him to lose the ability to look at her, instead staring at the floor ashamed and red faced from something different then exertion. When he spoke, it was little more then a gritted whisper, "Where is my book?"

"Don't know, don't have it," she replied, flippantly.

His eyes flew from the floor to her face, "What!?"

"I reckon," she cut in quickly before he could explode at her, "you should retrace your steps and check the cart for it."

Without another word, Claude dashed back down the ladder to find his book resting in the cart, where he had absent-mindedly left it to carry the crate. Picking it up lovingly, he stroked his thumb down the spine before tucking it safely under his arm.

"Very odd," the girl's voice sounded behind him.

Claude refused to look at her, about to stride away back to the dormitories when her coarsely spoken voice came again, "Book boy, you ever seen a sun rise?"

He stopped. Tongue momentarily blocking his mouth, he replied, "Yes, many times."

"Oh, well…"

Claude slowly turned to face her, something akin to awkward, throat drying panic rising within him as soon as his eyes met her face, the tangled fluttering burning, bricks in the wall loosening, causing him to splutter out, "I have to go."

"You do?" she said glumly. Claude didn't reply, striding away as fast as possible to get back to the dormitories, not even pausing to open his book.

As he walked, the hot, narrow street faded, twisted, altered, contorted to become no longer a street, but a square: The square that was before the cathedral of Notre-Dame.

Save himself and one other, it was empty. Empty as no Paris square, in the middle of the day, could be.

She moved, she spun, she danced, only for him. Her gypsy skin, her neck, her legs were for his eyes only, no other was there to stare or salivate, drool or dream. Her coy smile was directed solely at him; her dark eyes sought only his. For this one fantastical moment, detached from all space and time, she wholly, completely and exclusively belonged to him.

She beckoned him closer with a finger.

The gesture made his heart skip three beats, then pound wildly in order to catch up, all breath leaving him in a single gasp, brain unable to process any thought but mad desire… unseeing the black shadow that squatted high above him.

He took – or rather staggered – one step forward for her hand to instantly retract, and become again one with the dance. She turned from him, skirts sweeping the wooden platform, as her body took at once to a new rhythm, different then before, slower, no less elaborate, yet more so elegant. Erotic, curving, luring; her limbs caressed elongated movements that seemed to exude feminine grace, her figure taking all intricacies of the dance to flow them together, as water, to form one singular, continuous wave of untamed female sensuality.

It maddened him beyond all control: No longer could he bare to simply watch her, the pleasure of the voyeur had soured long ago, he must - he needed - to touch her. Almost hypnotised, he walked to reach the edge of the stage, eyes burning thirty six years of repressed passion, to be closer to her then he had ever dared before. She danced closer, her emerald skirt twirling just before his face as she turned away from him, then flexed her back into an impossible arch, her whole body taking on a deep curve. Neck following the arc, she leant back over the stage, her head lowering towards his own until their eyes were level, shining jewelled light into his smouldering coals, her full lips hovering agonizingly close to his. As he felt the heat of her breath upon his face; as her slightly parted lips crept ever closer, his eyes, on instinct, fluttered dreamily to a close…

He felt light fingertips skim his cheek.

Eyes flying open at the touch, his hand reached out to her to find the gypsy once more apart from him, twirling in the centre of the stage. Without thinking, he placed both hands on the wooden platform to pull himself upon it, no longer willing to be separated from her by any force, least of all a podium.

The face of the bat shadow turned a livid green.

As he stood up upon the podium, she continued to dance, ignoring his intrusion and flaming eyes, spinning swift footed circles around him, refusing to meet his gaze. Patience was no longer a virtue he owned. He lunged out to grab her by the arm, yet she pulled out of his grasp: The force of her dance seemed unstoppable, sensuality succumbing to animal ferocity with every step. Growling through gritted teeth, he tried to seize her arm again, yet once more she escaped him to the other side of the podium. He tried again and again and again, but every time she slipped his grasp; her skin soft as silk, yet, to him, each limb as slippery as an ocean eel. Throughout the rapidity of her dance, not once did she ever meet his desperate, desiring eyes: The tenderness and connection of a few moments ago would seem never to have existed.

Endless frustration mixed with denied passion brought the blood within his temples to boiling point. Her waist once more escaping his grasp, teeth grounding together, he barked out, "Witch!"

That grabbed her attention.

Her dance ceased immediately, in one swift movement crossing the stage to press her body up against him, dark breasts pressed against his torso, the top of her head reaching only to his chin. The sudden contact – though what he so desperately wanted - made him blanch white, a strangled half growl leaving his throat as she hooked two fingers over his priests collar, placing her other hand around his neck. Her eyes, no longer tender, but flashing a fire to match his own; her face, holding not warmth and kindness, instead contorted into an impish countenance of pure spite.

She moved up on her toes to place her lips to his ear, whispering in a tone oozing malice, "Do you love me?"

Her words, the caressing fingers at his throat, all prevented him from forming an answer that had possessed his soul for what seemed like centuries. His tongue was no longer able to grasp language, his mind, stupefied by sensation, no longer able to think in words, his hands acting as the only communicator as they moved to grip and squeeze the flesh that had been his tormentor day and night.

The moment his fingertips touched her body, the moment he stroked but an inch of that dark female flesh, experienced just a second of pleasure, the wings of the bat shadow descended upon him.

Blackness surrounded him, female screams filling his ears, himself yelling out in pain as his right shoulder suddenly seared with an agony that cut through to his spine . His back contorted, hands reaching out for something to support himself, finding nothing. The pain plunged deep beneath his skin, the female screaming growing louder and louder as his shoulder blade became bathed in a hot, sticky wetness, pain intensifying with a twist. His knees gave way. He collapsed to the ground, bones cracking on wood. The thick, sticky substance kept flowing, pooling beneath him, round him, over him, taking away consciousness as the female screams reduced to whimpers, then ceased.

As his eyelids drooped to a close, before he descended completely into the abyss, one image seared through the darkness: A face of a man contorted by green fury.

It swooped down and stuck his heart the final blow.


	5. The Demon

**The Demon**

Claude awoke to find himself face down in bed. He flipped onto his back for the previous day's encounter to rush immediately to the forefront of his mind: He groaned in humiliation.

She had laughed at him, tricked and mocked him. Caused him to say and think things, which – he convinced himself - were not true, which must certainly be irrational untruths. Untruths - that which his mind had no business delving in; his mind, which he had conditioned to explore only the certain, virtuous truths and to exclude all else.

Yet, there was now one such something that intruded upon his mind with full debasing uncertainty...

Claude closed his eyes for images of the dream to be summoned forth, causing his high cheeks to colour red. It seemed neither in the conscious or the subconscious – the unknown, unchecked desires of which were imbued utterly in dreams – he could escape.

But dreams were just imaginings. Imaginings he had no control over. Vivid as they may be, they were not reality. And yet Frollo, in the very darkest corner of his mind, was starting to doubt whether he had any more control over reality then he did his dreams.

He banished the thought, utterly degrading to one as self disciplined as Claude, turning his head to look at his books, untouched since yesterday. The appeal that these great tomes of knowledge held for him had since evaporated. What was once so sweet and pure was now mixed with the common and the base: Looking at his beloved books brought forth the association of parchment and the, as he now considered it, devilish substance of ink, which in turn brought him to the corner shop and finally, most devilish of all, thoughts of _her._

Claude rolled his head back to face the ceiling, mind succumbing to gloomy melancholy as, for perhaps the first time in his life, he could not bring himself to study.

But why had this girl caused such an effect in him? An uneducated peasant girl that bothered him so much; him who detested girls as a distraction of men from true, higher purposes and her, who possessed not a single attractive quality. If she had been intelligent, able to argue philosophy, comment science, speak the languages of the ancients, then maybe he would have been able to understand it. Or, if she had been extravagantly beautiful, then again he could have, begrudgingly, understood his weakness. But, for her just to be an ordinary girl with absolutely nothing special… it seemed like madness.

Yet he had never known any girls before. In a life spent sheltered in books, within the walls of the university, in a life set, by his parents, for the ecclesiastical estate, he barely had time for people at all, and never had he met any women nor wanted to. He hardly even knew his own mother.

Perhaps, Claude continued to reflect, this hateful lure he found himself upon came from the shop girl being simply the only girl he had ever come close to knowing. Claude's eyebrows dragged over his eyes. Still, it made no logical sense.

Claude had made up his mind long ago that he would never allow room in his life for anything other then science as his sister and God as his father. Never would he allow himself to be distracted by anything else. His pursuits of science and God were noble; his impulses towards this girl were anything but. Yet, Claude had succeeded at putting aside almost everything else in life, so surely this could be subdued too? It seemed rational, and yet the rational never seemed to apply where this girl was concerned.

Immediately, Claude scolded himself for the thought; of course the rational applied and, if it didn't, he would force it to. Claude turned his head again to look at his books, but thoughts of knowledge only turned sour. Instead he reached into the drawer of the little table beside his bed and brought out a different book: The Holy Bible.

It hadn't been opened for a while, Claude's sister of science being the more demanding of his family. But, like all books, he knew the contents better then the palm of his hand, better then he knew any living person. Smoothing his hand tenderly over the cover, Claude opened the book. If there was anything that could purify his mind, body and spirit, it was the Bible. Claude began to read.

In the distance, church bells started to toll. The grand, echoing becoming louder and louder, closer and closer as if the sounds were to consume the whole of Paris, Claude's little world along with it. Through his head the ringing continued, reverberating mercilessly until being replaced by a collective mumbling of voices.

_Kyrie eleison..._

Claude was on his knees, cold stone slabs biting into his shins. To his left and right, behind and in front, he was surrounded by rows of Parisians; faceless bowed heads mumbling together in prayer. They were inside a great cavern of gothic stonework; all arches, statues and pillars. The only light allowed in filtered through stained glass windows to paint a fractured, coloured portrait of the saints across the floor. This small amount of early morning light was overcome and swallowed up by the dark innards of the architectural beast, reduced to nothing but gloom, the only other light source an uncountable amount of candles. The flickering, dancing, threatening shadows cast on the stone walls seeming to serve as a reminder to where one was headed if one did not kneel.

_Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam__ ..._

Claude was in no other place then the great cathedral of Notre-Dame.

Next to Claude, to his left, a balding, middle aged man was muttering, almost feverish, prayers about his son; Claude caught the words of "tavern" and "wenches" used frequently. To his right, another man, younger and blonder then the first, was mumbling something about a goat. Behind him, in front, all around Claude were murmurings of lost family fortunes, lost mothers, unwanted ugliness, short comings, fears and debts.

Claude frowned; half at the Parisians inability to understand the concept of silent prayer, and half at the young man's payers involving nefarious deeds with a goat. Trying his best to ignore the goat man, Claude closed his eyes to pray for everything he usually did; success with his studies, the safety of his mother and father and that soon Grégoire would be transferred to a different room. However, that Sunday, there was an additional item on Claude's reverential agenda.

All other things prayed for except that last item, Claude opened his eyes a fraction to spy a nearby statue of the Virgin Mary. The stony eyes of Maria seemed to penetrate his with a look of utmost reproach and disappointment. Claude hesitated in his prayers. He was convinced his life had been, up until now, one of perfect virtue and goodness. He didn't wish God to view it any other way, didn't want to admit to the Holy Father that he had anything but the purest of thoughts and righteous of intentions. Claude didn't want to admit such fault...

_Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa..._

No, Claude decided, he would not – could not - pray for this affliction. It was base and dirty, and something neither he nor God should be soiled with. Claude was an expert at self discipline and control: He would overcome it on his own without having to disgrace himself to God. On that point, Claude was resolute.

The decision made, Claude got to his feet and left the cathedral.

_Kyrie eleison..._

As Claude passed through the great wooden doors, descending the cathedral steps to rejoin the street, the light of day seemed to ebb away before him. The pale blue morning sky shifting to take on a deeper, darker hue, white clouds becoming indigo and tinted red by the final rays of the evening sun. The air itself seeming to darken to a blue haze; the buildings of Paris reduced to a black silhouette against the sky. What had once been early morning was now plunged into the last moments of twilight, time seeming to fix itself on those last seconds of gloomy visibility before all was dropped into the blackness of night.

Claude continued to walk, making his way back to the dormitories, ignoring or unseeing as the last remaining people on the streets faded away with the morning light. Alone, with his head bent upon his chest, he took to the empty streets swiftly, leading left then right then left again. As he walked, an odd silence descended over Paris only to be broken by the sounds of the young scholar's shoes on stony cobbles.

His were not the only footsteps.

Halfway to his home, Claude's gaze snapped up as if pulled by a string. In the distance, Claude thought he could hear a second set of footsteps approach, the sounds of long, rapid, and yet strangely familiar, strides coming to his ears. It caused him to freeze to the spot. The noises seemed to vibrate and ricochet off the street, coming closer and closer, the owner surely about to emerge into Claude's line of vision at any moment.

"Death to the sorceress! Death to the sorceress!"

Blood thirsty chanting filled the air, the shouts sounding from the same direction as the footsteps. The steps came ever nearer, the shouts keeping the same distance yet growing in ferocity with each repetition, both chilling Claude's blood to the core. If the population of Paris was becoming riotous, an occurrence that was by no means uncommon, then there was only one place Claude wanted to be, and it was not to remain vulnerable in a dark, narrow side street. His brain told his limbs to move and quick, yet his chilled blood seemed to freeze them in place - if his head had been controlled by the pull of a string, then his legs were bound to the ground by an invisible rope.

The distant, yelling crowd continued, "Hang the witch! Hang the witch! Death to the gypsy girl!"

At that moment, a dark, tall figure emerged at the end of the street: The owner of the footsteps.

Claude stayed stock still as the man rapidly approached him, walking with long, quick strides. As he came closer, as the man's cassock and bowed head became defined through the dark twilight gloom, Claude recognised the man as the priest he had followed some days before in the square next to Notre-Dame.

Claude was certain it was he, and yet he had never - until now - seen the man's face. With the priest walking towards him, Claude now saw it front on. The priest's face had a deathly pallor that would make a ghost look flushed, deep set eyes and lines dug out like trenches across his forehead, the deep furrows dug deeper by heavy brows dragged together to form even more lines on his already wrinkled face. As the priest came ever closer, now only a few metres away from Claude, he watched as the man's facial features seemed to twitch and contort with a badly suppressed fury, fists continually clenching and unclenching as he walked. His face was like none Claude had ever seen: An utter expression of desperate torment.

"Death to the gypsy girl!"

As the angry chanting continued, the man walked straight past Claude never once acknowledging the boy's presence.

It was then that another form caught Claude's gaze.

Behind the priest, a good twenty meters behind that wretched man, a second figure lumbered forward in the shadow. A figure broad, impossibly angular, bow legged with a head forced to hang low by a horizontal neck; the only shape protruding upward from that misshapen body, and most distinctive of all, a great hump on its back. Claude continued to watch as it lumbered forward; the strange ungainly figure of the thing was able to move with both incredible speed and, even more surprising, incredible stealth.

The thing took a few more steps down the street, towards the priest, then abruptly halted.

A pause.

Slowly, it's triangular head twisted for its single, beady, glaring eye to fix itself on Frollo. In an instant the beast rushed forward to close the gap, thrusting it's vile head, deformed and grotesque, to be mere centimetres away from Claude's own, himself frozen to the spot as if some invisible force prevented him from movement. The true horror of that countenance – the face that could have only come from the arse of Beelzebub – filled his whole vision: Lumpy, swollen, one eye covered shut by a warty growth - The sight, the abhorrent ugliness so close, almost made Claude vomit.

Edging slowly forwards, a vengeful glint sparking in that single eye, the demon suddenly gnashed it's twisted teeth, jaws chopping forwards as if to take a bite from Claude's pasty face. He fell backwards into the wall to avoid the bite, wincing as his bones connected with hard stone. The demon immediately bared down upon him, leaning over him to place its tree like forearms either side of Claude's head, once more thrusting its gnarled face to be an inch from Claude's.

Fear - paralysing, spine shaking, gut clenching fear - coursed through Claude's veins to shake at his very core. Just one of those trunk like biceps, one flex of those large hands, would be enough to crush Claude's skull – and its contents – to a sticky pulp with the same ease a child could crush a plum. In a mere second, Claude's brain, and all the knowledge he had feverishly persevered to fill it with, would be dashed out dead on the pavement to be no more then grey, unthinking slush, mixed in with a dusting of shattered bone fragments.

Claude knew this, yet he did not struggle, did not cry out. Trapped underneath the heavy body of the demon, he only trembled.

The demon slowly drew back one arm to raise it above Claude's head, any second about to bring it down for a bone crushing blow. Claude shut his eyes tight, waiting for his inevitable death...

"Hang the gypsy! Hang the gypsy! Send the sorcerer to Hell!"

It never came.

Instead Claude, eyes still screwed tight, felt a gentle pressure on his chest. Quickly opening his eyes, he found the demon had strangely, and quite pathetically, rested its misshapen head on Claude's chest, its whole body shaking from terrible, guttural sobs.

The demon, Claude realised, was crying.

This sudden show of weakness imbued Claude with a burst of courage, and he tried to shove the ugly demon away. Yet the greater he struggled, the more intense the monster's grief became, releasing deep moans of sorrow, and moving its head from Claude's chest to throw a thick arm around his neck, the other hand moving to stroke back and forth through Claude's hair in something that seemed almost like an embrace...

Claude continued to struggle, beginning to pound balled fists into the demon, pushing, shoving, trying to crawl back to his feet using the wall behind, but all to no success. The demon kept his hold, Claude's resistance only managing to further exacerbate the demon's sorrowful weeping.

The arm around Claude's neck tightened. The twisted embrace shifting to a strangulation as Claude's windpipe was held shut. He struggled harder, arms flailing, throat gurgling, but the demon refused to relent. Claude's face turned red, then purple, then blue from lack of oxygen, his brain screeching for air, yet the arm around his neck refused to yield.

In one final effort, Claude freed a leg from under the demon to kick, hard, into the demons groin. It worked – even demons, it seemed, had the same weaknesses of man – the monster releasing its grip around Claude's neck, air once again flowing into Claude's lungs, and sobs ceasing abruptly. Yet it did not relent; hands pinning Claude to the stone, the demon's single eye expressing a look of complete desolate anguish.

A single wet drop fell from the one eyed demon to land on Claude's cheek.

Again, it moved its hand to try to clumsily pet Claude's hair, Claude smacking the hand away before it could touch him.

On this last piece of hostility the demon paused once more, its sorrowful eye subsiding again to a flare of vengeance, before raising its tree trunk forearm to position itself to strike the crushing blow. Claude, hopeless struggles ceasing, once more shut his eyes tight.

Seconds past. Nothing happened.

A second more, and Claude felt two hands roughly flip his body onto its front for his face to be pressed against the paving slabs. As soon as his forehead touched cold unforgiving stone, the demon only able to see the back of his head, the arm descended to shatter Claude's skull in a single crunching blow.

"Death to the gypsy!"

High above, maniacal, demonic laughter could be heard from Notre-Dame as blood and brain and bone became nothing more then pulp upon the pavement.


	6. The Crib

**The Crib**

Whispers.

"Eyes down! Eyes down! Eyes down!"

In a small room, Claude stood alone. It was completely deserted; beyond the closed door and solitary window, there was not a single piece of furniture. The room was simply a plaster wall box.

"Eyes down!"

Claude had no idea where he was, nor did he have any idea of what he was doing there. A wry smile took his lips: Perhaps it had finally happened. He'd gone mad.

As if to answer this thought, the whispers in and around his head continued, "Eyes down! Eyes down! Eyes down!"

Claude dragged his hand across his brow as if to push the ordering voices from his mind. It didn't work; they continued to whisper, to chant, left, right, above, below, the voices surrounding the young man with a fervency that begged never to be forgotten and impossible to ignore.

Claude downcast his eyes before reaching for the latch on the door, determining to find out exactly where he was. Unknown locations and whispering voices? Nothing could shake Claude Frollo's clear headed, logical mind... regardless of whether it was hearing voices or not.

The latch rose with a soft creak, the door swinging open with another. Claude carefully ducked through the doorway – the careful ducking certainly necessary for someone of Claude's newly acquired height – to find himself in a long, gloomy corridor. Instantly, he breathed in a faint odour of rot. Claude frowned. This corridor, complete with crumbling plaster walls and ominously creaky floorboards, seemed to remind him of somewhere, yet he couldn't say where. He only knew it was a place he had not been in a very long time, and was sure that, when he had last been there, there had not been any unpleasant rotting stenches...

"Speak softly! Speak softly!"

The whispers still continued, louder then before, more distinct, as if by moving into the corridor he had taken a step towards the source. Claude looked down the narrow corridor before him. There were doors, closed, leading off the corridor from the left and right all the way to the end.

"Eyes down!"

Claude strode to test the first door on the left: Locked. He tried the door opposite: Also locked. Methodically, he continued to progress down the corridor trying each door in turn: Locked, locked and locked.

"Voice low! Speak softly!"

The whisperers continued to chant – hypocrites, Claude thought - louder and louder in his ears. The voices were now obviously two: A man and a woman. As Claude made it past halfway down the corridor another noise joined the whispers. A faint, shrill wailing that seemed to be coming from somewhere to Claude's right. The noise was dulled by penetrating the plaster wall to reach his ears; dulled, but nevertheless there.

Ignoring the new sound, he kept trying doors, left, right, left, right: None would budge. The further he progressed down the corridor the stronger the unpleasant stench became. It crossed Claude's mind that this may not be a rotting smell that came from wood...

"Eyes down! Eyes down!"

Finally, Claude made it to the last door in the corridor. His stomach twisted uncomfortably as he realised that this was where the terrible stench was strongest, placing a hand over his nose and mouth in an attempt to block out the smell. The other hand he reached towards the door.

The voices ceased.

With a clunk the latch lifted; Claude flung open the door and stepped inside.

The rancid stink of rotten, decomposing flesh hit his lungs in an unleashed wave. The putrid plague air suffocating Claude as he doubled over to gag, cough and splutter, body heaving to reject the stench, flinging both hands to his face to try and smother his nose and mouth. This stench of long festering death seemed to penetrate his very pores, the intensity of the reek as if he'd stepped into a room stacked with half decayed bodies, yet there were none. The only thing inside that room was a single chair and an empty double bed.

Staggering through the waves of unbearable rotten air, Claude dragged himself back to the door to find it shut. The voices, momentarily silent, returned to shriek and scream in his ears, "Work hard! Spend little! Play less! Speak soft! Eyes down!" The words so loud they threatened to burst his ear drum. Trying to escape, Claude tugged at the door, it wouldn't move. Desperately, he rattled the latch, beat the wood, pushed, shoved and kicked, but the door refused to open. His body stopped its assault on the door to be taken by another fit of gagging, his lungs choking on the stagnant death air.

"Eyes down! Eyes down!"

Claude turned again to face the empty room. Without thinking, he strode towards the bed - where the rancid stink was most concentrated - and ripped the blanket from the bed. The blanket hid nothing; no corpses, no organs, not even a blood stained sheet to explain the plagued air of the room. Claude fell again to choking and gagging, his stomach on the verge of vomiting: He had to get out of the room.

Claude's eye fell on the wooden chair, then to the window. In two paces he gathered up the chair, stood side on to the glass window pane and lifted the chair back over his shoulder.

The voices hissed in his ear, "Never give blows! Never give blows!"

With a smash of broken glass Claude swung the chair against the window, bringing the voices to be once again silent. Without hesitation, paying no heed to the razor sharp shards on the window sill, he lunged his head and shoulders through the shattered pane into fresh air, gulping down the oxygen with greedy haste: The cool, clean air to his throat like a drink of water after being forced to guzzle a litre of black tar.

Considering this his chosen and only escape route, Claude placed both hands on the edges of the window frame, wincing as he slit his right palm on the glass. Undeterred – he had not yet looked down – Claude swung one leg over the sill to place his foot on the edge of a wooden strut that protruded from the wall. Putting his weight on that foot, Claude brought the rest of his body through the window, letting out a hiss as his fingers again cut clumsily on the remaining glass. Finally, he dragged his other foot through the window to place it carefully on a second protruding strut.

It was then that Claude looked down.

Twenty meters below Claude was the ground, grassy and green, yet with a twenty meter fall, certainly not springy. Certainly not fatal either, Claude surmised. He did not suffer from vertigo, but when one is balanced precariously on the side of a building, with the prospect of pain and broken bones if you slip, one cannot help but feel uncomfortable.

Perhaps questioning if this was such a good idea after all, Claude glanced back into the room. He definitely did not wish to climb back into the stifling stench of rotting flesh; beyond the obvious grotesqueness, the smell, the room, it all seemed to eerily provoke a memory that he couldn't quite place, nor wanted to.

A memory that lay just out of reach.

No, Claude would not go back. As long as he was careful, he should easily – he hoped - be able to lower himself from the protruding wooden struts down to the window sill below, and from there drop safely to the ground. Claude was about to begin the descent, when he again heard the shrill wailing from the house. This time, without the accompanying whispers, he recognised what it was: A child.

Claude hesitated. His first instinct was to ignore the sound from the house that he found so unsettling and continue to escape as fast as possible. His second instinct would let himself do no such thing. Death had clearly left its mark on that house, the child, if it truly was a child, could be alone and abandoned. If he left now he would condemn the child to an agonizingly slow starvation and death. Claude's conscience often twisted grey acts to white, but never could it allow Claude to abandon a possible child in need. Another person may well have done, Frollo could not.

Claude listened to the pitiful wail; without a doubt it came to his right. Looking across the wall of the building, each strut, two of which Claude was currently balancing on, protruded slightly from the wall to support the second floor of the house upon the first, the protrusions giving just enough room to place a foot. Slowly, keeping his back to the wall and using his arms to balance, he stepped from strut to strut to make his way around the outside of the building. Claude ensured he did not look down, the careful hand he dragged along the wall leaving a trail of blood, cut from the glass, as he went.

Claude reached the first corner; the wail was becoming nearer. In one smooth movement he navigated around the corner to continue along the wall, approaching a window. Eight more struts till the window. Five more struts to go. Four more struts. Three more struts... Alas, Claude did not see the wood ahead of him that was reduced to a soft rotten lump, unable to support the weight of a child let alone a full grown man.

He placed his front foot on the rotten beam and transferred his weight. The wood crumbled instantly. Claude was tipped forward into support-less air. He fell.

Frollo twitched.

Claude reached out his arms and grabbed the window sill. His body slammed into the wall, his grip on the sill tight, cut and bloody palms throbbing under the pressure, sticky red squeezing free underneath. Panting, his legs scrabbling against the wall, he slowly pushed himself up to regain a footing on a strut, then heaved his whole body to be once more upright and stable on the wall.

He had by the skin of his teeth – or rather by the blood on his hands – escaped the fall.

Taking a moment to try to steady his breath and unclench his stomach, Claude peered in through the glass. Without a doubt this was the room from which the shrill wailing was coming from; a crib set up in the middle of the room. Strangely, from looking through the window, Claude could not make out a single door...

The window was shut, but Claude no longer hesitated on such things. He threw one arm over his eyes, turning his head away to protect it, gritting his teeth as he brought the other arm back to smash his elbow through the glass. It shattered; glass fragments everywhere, yet miraculously Claude did not receive a single cut. Carefully, he climbed through the broken window to stand inside the room, which he now saw was indeed utterly door-less. Claude's brow furrowed in confusion: Was the architect drunk or simply moronic?

His mind, however, couldn't dwell on the logic of this architectural anomaly; the sound of a crying child, no longer dulled by walls or glass, prevented it by cutting him, logic and all, to the core. The lonesome cry of dejected abandonment seemed to resonate back and forth within Claude, stirring feeling, pity and compassion, the likes of which he'd never known. He'd heard crying children before, of course, but never had he been the sole listener, a child's only hope. Slowly, stiffly, he approached the crib to look inside.

A baby boy, perhaps only a few months old, dressed in swaddling clothes, lay inside. Rosy cheeked, face red from crying, with tufts of blonde curly hair and a round face; it captured a part of life Claude, in his books, had never known. At the sight of this little, vulnerable creature, a strange, new warmth of tenderness flowed through him. The baby seemed to have been crying for hours; Claude, after wiping his bloody hand off on his doublet, not a single scrap of logic governing the action, reached out a finger to stroke it's cheek. Never had he touched something so soft, so fresh, so... precious.

A smile tweaked at Claude's lips as the baby, still crying, reached a tiny hand to clasp at Claude's finger. The human contact was like a light to flood his emotionally blank existence. His fingers moved from the cheek to cradle the babies head, his other hand moving to gently lift him from the crib to hold him close. Without a word or shush, nothing more then contact, the baby stopped its tears. Claude gently cradled him.

The feel of another living being in his arms, young and vulnerable, was bliss. He thought himself the baby's only protector, both mother and father, rescuer and salvation. The child, at that moment, had no-one to depend on but himself: Claude glowed with a new found sense of responsibility. A new sense of life.

Gently, Claude traced a calming finger down the child's back. His smile twitched into a frown. The baby's spine seemed misshaped, twisted to form an unnatural bump at the back. Claude examined it closer. Along with the strangely shaped back, its legs also seemed overly angular, yet as it lay, no longer crying but giggling in his arms, the baby seemed nothing but healthy. Claude didn't care about such abnormalities. If anything, it simply meant that the boy needed his protection even more.

Slowly, carefully, Claude lowered his head to place a light kiss on the little child's forehead. It let out a happy gurgling sound as he did for Claude's lips to again form a smile. At that moment, Claude felt he would have been content to spend the whole day and evermore simply standing with the baby cradled in his arms.

He would never need anything more.

Minutes passed by and still Claude, in his state of utter contentment, had not moved a step. Without warning, the child slipped again into tears. It brought Claude roughly from his state of happy reverie back to reality. The child may not have had any nutrition for hours, and here he was like an idiot doing nothing but cuddling it. Claude glanced around the room, it was completely empty, no furniture other then the crib and, however impossible it seemed, not a single door that connected the room to the rest of the house. The baby continued to cry.

"Sshhh," Claude hushed, stroking, cradling and rocking, but all to no success. His comforting only seemed to encourage the baby's cries into wails. While they remained in the house there was nothing Claude could do to stop it. They had to leave, of that Claude was certain.

Ensuring the baby was properly wrapped, held firm and safe in his arms, Claude moved towards the broken window: His only exit. Gingerly, he cleared with one hand the remaining glass fragments from the window. He was so distracted by the child's continued crying that he didn't notice when a few stray shards of glass drew blood from his already bloody fingertips. The well being of his own hands meant little to him. The window completely cleared of glass, Claude looked over the edge. The twenty meter drop seemed further down then he remembered it...

He gulped. There was no other way.

"Hold tight," he said softly. But, if the baby could understand him, it seemed the little child was set on ignoring him, continuing to cry and wriggle against the arm that meant nothing more then to hold him safe.

Claude took a deep steadying breath. He lifted his left leg over the sill, his right hand gripping the top of the window frame like a vice. Climbing down by himself wouldn't have been easy, and with one arm having to hold a child still? He only knew one thing: He would not – he would never - let anything happen to this boy. Not while it was under Claude Frollo's protection.

He drew his second leg over the window sill to place his foot on a wooden strut that jutted out from the wall, careful to avoid the strut that had collapsed on him in his previous climb. He tested his weight on the wood protrusions: They held firm. So far so good, he thought. The baby continued to wail.

The second floor of the house was wider then the first. Thus, to support the floor that jutted out beyond the walls of the ground building, diagonal beams were set to connect the horizontal struts to the bricks of the first floor wall. It was these sloping diagonal beams that Claude was about to use in order to safely reach the window sill below.

Slowly, he moved the hand that gripped the top of the window frame to grip the sill, lowering himself to crouch over the struts. Far from being paralysed with fear the baby, hovering twenty meters above the ground, began to writhe and struggle in Claude's one armed hold.

"Be still," Claude hissed through gritted teeth. The child continued to disobey: Crying, bawling and squirming against his arm. Claude tried to better adjust his hold on the child, but he couldn't move his second hand from gripping the window sill for fear of falling.

Finally satisfied that the child had stilled somewhat, Claude lowered his body further to hook a leg around the diagonal beam. He winced as his weight hung largely from his sliced and bloodied palm, gripping the window sill, pain like flames against the wood. The child, momentarily settled, began to scream again, wriggling with a new found energy until its legs kicked free to dangle below Claude's grip.

"Hold still!" he barked, but the baby didn't listen, didn't understand; Claude's order only encouraging it to struggle more against his arm. He tried to move his second leg down to the diagonal beam for the baby to slip even lower in his grasp. "Stop struggling," he cried desperately, finding himself stuck on the diagonal beam, unable to move the hand that clung to the window sill, unable to use the hand that clung to the baby. It screamed, kicked, thrashed and twisted, "Hold still!"

"Eyes down! Eyes down!"

The moment the whispers sounded the baby finally twisted free. Frollo was helpless to stop it. It slipped through Claude's arm to fall, a tiny pink blob screaming in the air, to hit the ground with a dull thud. The sound of something soft breaking on impact.

In anguish, Claude looked down to see the smear on the grass.

The child would cry no more.


	7. The Keyhole

**A/N:** Sexual perversion ahoy.

**The Keyhole**

"Book boy! You're back!"

Claude froze in the street. Eyes down, he hadn't heard that voice in weeks.

He raised his eyes a little to see the dratted girl standing just outside the corner shop, two other boys also standing in the doorway. As she trotted over to him, he quickly flicked his eyes back to the book in his hands.

"You here to buy ink and things again?" she asked in her course voice, lowering her head to catch his gaze.

Claude responded with a single emotionless word, "Yes."

"Then that means you can stay around a bit," she said - somewhat illogically, Claude thought - taking his wrist and, with a tug, leading him to where the two other boys squatted against the wall. He did not say nor feel anything; he had determined a few weeks ago not to hide or run from this girl - he would simply control all to act without any feeling whatsoever. That was his plan, his head telling himself to pull away from the silly girl to buy his parchment and ink in peace.

Yet he did not. For no reason he could place, he allowed himself to be led where he didn't want to be led, his face taking on a look of impassive stone, eyes that used to spark only for learning, deadened to all.

She pulled him towards the two boys who, he saw, were about his age, one leaning intently over something, the other, to Claude's surprise, regarding him through hardened, narrowed eyes. Claude met his gaze. This boy had similar dark hair to Claude's, but was perhaps an inch shorter, body far more in proportion with a broad frame, strong shoulders and a healthy tan. Standing next to the boy, Claude felt himself to be something of an albino stick insect - he made a mental note to stop skipping meals.

"Book boy, this is Jacques," she said, pointing to the boy who was giving him the mistrustful look. "And this is the Squid. Jacques and Squid, this is Book Boy. He's a bit odd, but he's alrigh'."

At this last comment, Claude gave the girl a sidelong look. It occurred to him that she still didn't know his name...

The Squid moved his head up from whatever he was doing to leer at Claude with a toothy grin. He was lanky, with long, thin arms and impossibly long fingers to match. His eyes, set into sallow features, were a watery blue, staring vacant except for an unpleasant glint of something that resembled a strange hunger. Unsettlingly, the hungry glint seemed to intensify with the sight of Claude.

Jacques was the first to speak, his voice deep as if it had broken some time ago,"What's he do?"

"He reads books at the University," she supplied before Claude could answer.

Jacques released a semi snort, expression returning to one of not caring as soon as the girl released her hold on Claude's wrist.

Regardless of his uninterested expression, Jacques asked stiffly, "He a rich kid?"

Claude disliked most of the boys at the University; he was fast deciding that he disliked all boys outside of it as well.

"Nah, he just likes books," again, the girl answered for Claude. He frowned at her simple minded response, but still he didn't speak. Claude summed both boys up as having earth for brains, and as such he had nothing to say to them.

The Squid let out a slow thick chuckle at the girl, "Like she could ever meet a rich boy."

Jacques immediately gave the Squid an elbow to the ribs, "Watch it." The girl, however, seemed to let the insult roll off her back.

"Pfft, you're just ticked off that you won't never become one."

Jacques' smirked at the girl's remark. The Squid, naturally, could think of nothing clever to retort and so compromised with grinning gormlessly. Still Claude said nothing, standing with his book in one hand and watching the three of them crouching on the side of the street.

"You going to sit down or just stand there like an idiot?"

Claude scowled at the girl... then sat.

The early interest that the two boys – or at least Jacques – had in Claude had quickly dissipated for their attention to move back to what the Squid held in his hands. Claude now saw that it was a wooden cube puzzle: Put together the collection of pieces to form a solid cube. Little to say, the Squid had not got far.

"You're makin' a right mess of that," Jacques said, picking up one of the many unused pieces to spin it in his hand, "I said it's impossible. If I can't do it, you can't."

"It is not impossible."

Claude had abandoned his silence. The three of them turned slowly to look at him. Jacques muttered, "Talks like a bleedin' rich boy..."

"It is not impossible," Claude repeated, ignoring Jacques remark to reach for a long piece the Squid had abandoned on the pavement. He ran his finger along the many ridges of the piece, it had to be the centre point, Claude thought.

"I said it's impossible, 'cause it is."

Claude glanced up to meet Jacques hard gaze, "It is not."

"Three pennies says it is."

"I do not gamble."

Jacques scoffed, "You only say that 'cause you know you'll lose."

"Perhaps, I do not wish to take your money," Claude replied, plucking the puzzle pieces from the long fingers of the squid to spread them out on the pavement. Logically, methodically, he began to fit pieces together, within seconds getting further then the Squid ever did. While he continued to put more pieces of the cube together, Claude couldn't help but sneak a glance at the girl who he saw, out of the corner of his eye, was passively watching him.

Three spaces left on the cube. Claude reached out a hand to Jacques requesting he gave over the final piece. Reluctantly, he did for Claude to place the last pieces into the cube.

"Not impossible," he declared with an almost triumphant air, spinning the finished cube in his hands before giving it to the girl to inspect.

"That's what they teach you over there then," she said, "how to solve useless cube puzzles." The faint frown line appeared on Claude's head at her reaction. She seemed oblivious to how much her light remark stung his principles. Dismissive remarks aside, she twirled the smooth wooden cube in her hands with a smile on her lips. She didn't hold it for long.

"Load of bollocks."

Jacques knocked the cube from her hands for it to break back into pieces on the pavement. The Squid let out another series of thick chuckles at the destruction, the girl irritated, "Jacques, what you do that for?"

A second frown line appeared on Claude's forehead, "Because he is too moronic to do it himself."

The fox had pulled the wolf's tail.

Jacques leapt to his feet, putting two hands on Claude's doublet to drag him upright.

"You think you're better then me, do you?" he half growled, hard grey eyes but an inch from Claude's. Claude didn't respond, suddenly becoming all too aware of Jacques' far broader build. "Do you?" he repeated louder, giving Claude a shove backwards.

"Don't do... He didn't mean it, Jacques," the girl said quickly from behind. Claude cast a look at her: The expression on her face seemed to think it knew exactly where this encounter would end, the Squid's gormless chuckles agreeing with her. Her lack of faith made something begin to boil in Claude, something that had never boiled before.

Glaring back into Jacques hard gaze, he spoke, "Only fools cannot read."

His remark offended more people then he had intended: "Don't be a prick book boy."

If the girl had been any sort of ally, Claude had lost her then.

Jacques gave Claude another shove, backing him into the wall and ripping the book from his hand to throw it roughly onto the pavement. Claude always thought he sat on the moral high ground; little did he know the high ground had just collapsed from beneath his feet.

"Little, pamper'd rich boy, who ain't done a days work in his life," Jacques growled into Claude's face, "What do you know 'bout anything?"

"Everything."

Crack!

Jacques smashed a fist hard into Claude's jaw. His head snapped back into the wall behind, setting off a blast of pain and white light. His head rang with the impact. Unable to summon the strength to return a single blow, Claude slid his body down the wall into a heap on the floor. Jacques stood above him, grim faced and fists now clenched at his sides.

"Nothin'."

He spat a glob of saliva at Claude's feet, then turned back to the girl and the Squid. Claude, in his daze of white light, could not make out their expressions, nor did he wish to. The girl said something he couldn't understand, the thick laughter of the Squid reverberating back and forth through his ears.

He heard Jacques voice, "Come on, let's go..." He watched his fingers move to tentatively grasp the girl's hand. He watched as her fingers slowly enclosed around his...

Jealously flared from nowhere. The taste of blood trickling between his lips, Claude lunged himself forward to tackle the boy around the middle. Jacques let out a grunt of surprise, staggering, both boys hitting the stone slabs with a smack. Claude, vision clouded by red and green, body on top of Jacques, brought a balled fist into his ribcage. Jacques, using his weight advantage to pin Claude back to the ground, one hand holding his shoulder, the other, knuckles brought down to break blood on Claude's face.

Again and again and again, Jacques' fist came down upon him like a battering ram. Claude, pain deadened by fury, pinned below him, brought an elbow up to jab into the boy's neck. Voices, laughter, chanting, shouting, all surrounded Claude in a fog of indiscernible clamour as he kicked out to relinquish Jacques' momentarily slackened hold. Scuffling, Claude again tried to strike back blows, but Jacques' overpowered him, winding him with a blow to the stomach.

Flat on his back, struggling beneath the stronger Jacques, Claude's hand fell on something oblong and... leather bound. He gripped it tight to slam it hard into Jacques' face, the boy letting out a cry of pain on impact.

All at once Claude's vision seemed to blacken; the voices around him blurring; the feel of two hands grabbing his arms, dragging him up... up... up...

"Maître Frollo, is that all you have to say for yourself?"

Claude felt his head move down and up in a nod.

His surroundings materialised from a formless inky blue to become a room, a desk and a person behind it. Claude gulped: He was in the Rector's office at the University.

The aforementioned Rector, portly and crinkly, let out a sigh.

"I honestly cannot begin to describe my disappointment that you of all people, Maître Frollo, would let down our institution by brawling in the street with a blacksmith's apprentice. Others I expect it from, but not you."

"Sir, I don't think brawling is the right word," Claude interrupted.

"Monsieur Corbin used exactly that word Maître Frollo, and your blackened eye and split lip seem to agree with him."

Claude stayed silent. He didn't even need to see a mirror to know his face was swollen. The continuous throbbing told all.

After a deliberate pause, the Rector continued.

"Neither did I expect myself to be required to inform you that library property is not to be used for the purposes of _bludgeoning_."

"Yes, sir," Claude said with the tone of the supplicant. Yet, when his eyes fell upon the library property in question, the spine sprinkled with flecks of blood that he knew weren't his, something of a smirk crept its way onto Claude's features.

The Rector frowned.

"As this is your first 'offence', and your history with the university has been, up until now, nothing but pure... I don't think we need to take the matter any further then this office. Thus, I will not be writing a complaint to your father."

Here the Rector paused, as if expecting Claude to say something. He did not.

"However, if you do again take it unto yourself - like most of your fellow students - to shame the name of our blessed institute, then I will not hesitate to write such a letter. You are an excellent student Maître Frollo, an excellent student. Hard working, eager to learn, astute and discerning, assiduous in every aspect... I would hate to see you waste yourself, and your potential, on such base misdeeds."

Here the Rector again paused to give Claude a very long and very grave stare that seemed to suggest to Claude just how very, very long and very, very grave the lecture would be following a second "base misdeed". Finally, the Rector spoke.

"Be sure to consult yourself on these matters, Maître Frollo... You may go."

The Rector waved his hand to signal his dismissal. Claude picked up the bloodied book and left the room. As soon as the door between him and the Rector closed, Claude began to burn with indignant fury.

"Consult myself on the matters?" he muttered through gritted teeth, "I've been consulting myself on nothing else!"

Bubbling with suppressed temper, he strode – or rather stomped – back to his room. His fists clenching and unclenching themselves as his thoughts first concentrated on hating Jacques – a peasant thick as bricks – and then moved on to hating that blasted girl. The image of her hand in Jacques' seared through his mind. It was her fault he had ended up in a fight. It was all her fault. She had been leading him on!

He reached his room and slammed the door behind him. Leading him on to what?

Claude grimaced, dropping the book on his desk. He wouldn't say it, think it or even define it. She would not reduce him to such things. Claude glanced at the book, blood staining the corner. It reminded him too much of... everything. Hastily, Claude shoved the book out of sight inside a drawer.

Letting out a deep sigh, a strange mix of melancholy and irritation, Claude pulled a new book from his shelf at random, opened it just as randomly, and began to read. The word "reading" in this context means to stare blindly and continually at one sentence over and over again without taking note of a single word. When Claude realised this, he turned the page only to stare at it in exactly the same manner as he had the last. Claude was in such a state of distraction that he didn't even realise he was voluntarily reading astrology. Claude turned another page as badly suppressed giggling sounded from the corridor.

The door opened. In entered Grégoire, tugging a little blonde girl, perhaps fourteen, behind him, her little face a picture of blushes and giggles. Claude rolled his eyes. When Grégoire realised Claude was occupying their shared room, so did he.

Grégoire turned his back to Claude to deliver a soft, salivary kiss to the girl. Claude tried to ignore them, staring into his book, but hairs on the back of his neck prickling all the same. Their lips detached in a slurp. Grégoire whispered something into the girl's ear before crossing the room to Claude, the girl remaining by the door. Claude's presence seemed to make her red flush deepen to a shade of crimson.

Grégoire stood next to Claude, speaking to him in an undertone, "Frollo, I need the- God, what in the blazes happened to your face?"

"I got into a fight."

"With the stairs?"

"No," Claude replied icily, "With a boy."

Grégoire laughed, "The saintly Claude Frollo, holier then thou art, got into a fight? What over? Some student disagree with you on philosophy?"

"It was not a student, it was a blacksmith."

Claude chose not to include the word "apprentice".

"It must have been. No student of Plato could have given you a black eye like that," Grégoire replied. He gave Claude a hearty clap on the back, "Well then, congratulations on finally sinking to everyone else's level! I must buy you a drink-"

"I don't drink."

"Still holding onto that moral are you? Then I suppose I'll just have to buy you something else to commemorate the occasion... A bottle of ink, perhaps? Yes, perfect, I will not get you a bottle of wine, but a bottle of ink instead. Now, as to the present..."

Grégoire glanced back across to the girl who was standing obediently, and somewhat breathlessly - the poor misguided thing - next to the door. Grégoire continued in fractured Latin, reducing his voice to an undertone in order to keep the conversation private.

"Frollo, I need you out of the room for a quarter of an hour."

"I'm busy," Claude replied in far better pronounced Latin.

"Be busy somewhere else."

"Use a bush."

"Quisnam?"

"A bush!" Claude repeated loudly in plain French. Grégoire rapidly motioned him to lower his voice, trying to dust over this unromantic blunder of Claude's with a smile to the girl. Luckily for Grégoire, whether it be in Latin or French, the girl had very little idea of the implications of what they were talking about.

"A gentlemen does not take a girl to a bush," Grégoire hissed in French, abandoning his terrible Latin.

"Then pay for a room."

"Not when I've got a perfectly good room myself."

Claude frowned darkly, "I was here first."

"Maybe, but you can read that book anywhere, I can only enjoy that lovely girl with the use of a bed."

"How unfortunate for you."

"Look Frollo, you know I would do the same for you if I was in your position."

Claude gave Grégoire an icy look, dark brows dragging over frowning eyes. Anger and jealously of a few moments ago had manifested itself into an even greater rigidity of morals. Morals that were so stubborn they were not satisfied until they were subjected to everyone else as well.

"I am not moving," Claude growled, "to allow you to wallow in sin."

"Wallowing? Where did you get that idea from? I am simply sipping."

"I am not moving from this desk," Claude repeated tersely.

"No?"

"No."

Grégoire paused for a moment, eyes fixed on Claude's. Claude stubbornly turned back to his book.

"Move Frollo. Out."

"I said I am not-"

Grégoire grabbed Claude roughly by the shoulders and hauled him out of the chair. Claude struggling, but utterly overpowered by the far bulkier nineteen year old as he was dragged to the door. A final shove and he was thrown into the corridor, landing face first into the floorboards. Scrambling to his feet, Claude turned towards the doorway for a flash of an incoming leather bound...

Smack!

Nine hundred and fifty four pages of astrology collided with Claude's head. Knocked almost senseless by this practical lesson in physics, Claude dropped back to the ground to succumb once again to a fug of pain induced white light. Agony. Dizziness. Throbbing. The impact prevented Claude from being able to find his way to his feet, or anywhere that wasn't the floor.

His head was having a bad day indeed. He almost felt sorry for Jacques...

Claude, still flat on his back, heard the sound of a door closing, followed quickly by a turned key in the lock. Claude struggled to his knees to reach for the door just seconds too late. Grégoire had locked him out.

Claude cursed as he heard giggling from the other side of the door: Both Grégoire and the girl laughing delightedly. "Grégoire, open this door now!" Claude ordered, pressing his eye to the keyhole in order to see inside the room.

The giggling had stopped. Not because of Claude's shouting, but because Grégoire was in the process of pressing another eager kiss to the young girls mouth. Her hands reached up to clutch the collar of his doublet, Grégoire's own hands wandering the curves of her body through the dress. Claude's eyebrows drew together in consternation: He could shout all he wanted, he was not going to be let into the room.

Grégoire pulled his lips and tongue from the girls rosy pink mouth to begin to suck – or as it looked to Claude, to chew - at her bare neck, hands moving over enthusiastically to undo the laces on her bodess. The girl's arms were clinging around Grégoire's broad, if somewhat flabby, back. Her eyes fluttered to a close – from anticipation, confusion or shame, Claude couldn't tell. Possibly none... Possibly all three.

As Grégoire pulled down the dress to reveal the girls pale shoulders, Claude drew back from the keyhole. He knew he should not be watching this. This which was going to end in the worst kind of sin...

Claude nervously licked his lips. Curiosity - perverted and natural - overrode it all. He pressed his eye back to the keyhole.

_The worst kind of sin._

Grégoire had succeeded in pulling the girl's dress down around her waist, fondling roughly the newly revealed flesh. Claude released a heavy breath at the sight of so much skin. Grinning, Grégoire began to lead her to his bed, stopping halfway to change direction and pull her across to Claude's own bed instead. "Finally baptised," Grégoire smirked.

Claude ground his teeth. Half at Grégoire sullying his property and half... at something else. Frollo had the very strange feeling he'd witnessed a similar scene to this before, but between two very different people...

He pressed his eye closer to the keyhole.

The girl, seated semi-naked on Claude's bed, moved her fingers to start to undo Grégoire's doublet, but the older boy would have none of it. He grabbed her hands, holding them at her sides as he leaned over to take another deep - and very salivary - kiss from her lips. She made no resistance: Submissive clay to his graceless hands.

Grégoire moved one of those particularly graceless, and particularly adventurous, hands to explore deep beneath the girl's skirts. The girl bit her lip. So did Claude. Heat rose in his cheeks as he shifted on his knees to better see Grégoire and the young girl across the room, a dull ache tearing at his groin.

Many tricky and hastily performed manoeuvres later, and Grégoire succeeded in parting the girl from her final garments with a flourish. He turned her over for her to be bent forward over the bed, face and breasts against the covers. The covers of Claude's bed. The scholar, shaking behind the door, went hot and cold at the sight.

At the idea.

Grégoire, standing directly behind the girl – who was waiting patiently in a not wholly comfortable position - seemed only to remove the smallest amount of clothing possible. He unbuckled his belt, tossing it to the ground, then undid the laces on his hose before his hands moved to once more mould around the girl's delicate curves.

Claude, from the keyhole, continued to watch as the girl attempted to turn around to face Grégoire on the bed, Grégoire roughly twisting her back around to face away and hold her in place. Rapidly, back and forth, he began to grind his hips against her. Grunting, gasping and groaning, it seemed to Claude like a lot of pushing and shoving. The girl with a quasi pained expression on her face, Grégoire, head leaning back to gasp at the ceiling.

A few minutes later, and it was all over. Claude knew very little, but he was sure it was supposed to last longer then that...

Grégoire, worn out, breathing heavily as if he'd just ran a race, collapsed back onto Claude's bed. He seemed to be strangely satisfied, the girl however had silent tears running down her face. Grégoire seemed not to notice.

Claude watched them a little more as they lay silently apart on his bed. Abruptly, Claude got to his feet, quivering and trembling, to leave Grégoire and the girl, the keyhole and everything that he'd just seen, far behind him.


	8. The Torture

**The Torture**

Frollo blinked awake.

Flat on his back, he flexed his shoulders.

His limbs did not feel tense; they did not feel, as they did every morning, as if he'd been pulled taut on the rack. His body did not feel wearisome, as worn down as it had been before he'd fallen asleep. Neither did his mind, on waking, fill with a swirl of thought; Jehan, God and science; theories that needed experimentation, problems that needed solutions, a hundred questions that needed a hundred answers. Nor did his gut churn with sour emotions; jealousy, obsession and depression. For once in his life, Frollo felt none of this. Instead, he felt...

Relaxed.

Released.

Calm and loose.

It was as if a great burden from his shoulders had been dissolved over night. His body was eased, his mind pacified and his soul set free.

Frollo's eyes drooped to a close: He was in bliss.

Slowly, he shifted to lean on one side; the woollen blanket scratching against his bare skin with the movement. Through the singular window, light poured into the cell to give every surface a warm golden glow. Every surface, including the warm body that lay next to him.

_Esmeralda._

She lay beside him, sleeping curled on her side; her raven hair falling about her bare shoulders, full lips parted to release gentle breaths, and delicate hands resting together beside the pillow. Her facial features, holding only simple kindness when awake, were softer still when asleep.

Frollo watched her in reverence; she was a dark skinned angel. She was perfection itself.

She was his.

Frollo smiled. Propping his elbow up on the bed, and resting his chin in his hand, he continued to watch her as he had done months before, and would do for evermore. Except now, he was not cursed to only watch...

As if to perfect perfection, Frollo reached out to tuck a stray piece of dark hair away from her face. Esmeralda did not stir, remaining with peaceful dreams at his touch. Unwilling to break contact, Frollo drifted his fingers down her cheek, the skin soft like silk, to then trace the side of his middle finger down her neck to reach her collar bone. His whole hand then began to work its way beneath the blanket, down the curve of her body, lingering across her breast, past her ribcage to reach the swell of her hip.

Esmeralda's eyes fluttered open. Dreamily, her lips took on a smile at his proximity. Frollo smiled back. His hand descended lower over her bare skin, sliding down her thigh to reach her knee.

His fingers were engulfed in warm, slippery pulp.

Frollo tore his hand back from underneath the blanket to find it covered in a thick, dark red. He glanced to Esmeralda: Still she wore an expression of content tranquillity. Looking back to his hand, a glob of soft, spongy mush was caught between his fingers. The red had begun to trickle down his arm. He felt his right foot, close to Esmeralda's, become soaked in something thick, wet and warm.

In an instant, Frollo tore the blanket from the bed. His eyes widened in horror at what lay beneath. Past the knee cap of Esmeralda's left limb, her smooth skin ceased to be, the flesh lacerated, torn and minced, hanging in jellied clumps from splintered, shattered bone. At the end of the pulp, a sole toe remained intact, attached to a twisted smear of muck that was once a foot. The bone itself fractured and broken, protruding from the flesh like snapped barkless sticks. Pink and yellow marrow leaked out to mix in the blood that drenched the bottom third of the bed. The red continuously seeping from Esmeralda into the mattress, till it saturated outwards, on top lying in a sticky pool where it could no longer be absorbed.

Innocently, red mouth still smiling, Esmeralda asked, "Do you love me?"

Frollo blanched white.

Scrabbling to back away, separate himself from the pulpy slime that was once a leg, he slipped in the never ending blood to fall back and over the side of the bed to the floor.

"_Do you love me?"_

Frollo woke with a jolt.

His eyes flew open to the pitch black of night. Shaking, cold sweat upon his brow, he frantically clawed an arm up and down the right side of the bed.

It was empty. Nothing more then a mattress and a blanket.

Mind reassured, Frollo slumped back onto his pillow and released a long sigh of relief. Never had he been so pleased to be alone. Slowly, his mind let go of the dream for his eyes to fall to a close...

A slender arm wrapped itself around his waist.

A whisper of sweet lips.

"Do you want me?"

Eyes snapping open, Frollo slapped a hand to the side of his head as if to swat away the whisper. His hand found nothing but his own ear.

"Would you save me?"

Bloodied finger tips smeared across his mouth. Frollo dived to his left, as if to shove the owner of the fingers from the bed, yet there was nothing. No one, but thin air. Frollo lunged over the side to again fall flat on the floor.

This time he did not wake up.

He lay still. There was nothing but dark. A silence only broken by his heavy breathing. He did not get up, body remaining pressed against hard stone and peering into the gloom.

Night. Black. Nothing.

A tap.

A tiny sound on the stone to his left.

Another tap. And another. And another.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

It fell from the underside of the bed. It became thicker, heavier, pooling next to Frollo on the stone floor. In the dark, he couldn't make out the individual droplets save one long, thick strand oozing down from the underside of the bed to finally join the ever enlarging pool.

Frollo raised himself slowly to his knees, not daring to touch the ever dripping substance. He already knew what it was.

The sickly sweet voice sounded from atop the bed, "Do you love me?"

Frollo froze, eyes gradually rising to find the gypsy girl – his gypsy girl – sitting upon his bed. Her bright eyes shone through the gloom to meet his; her mouth turned up in a gentle smile. She shifted one leg forward, intensifying the splatters of blood that dripped through the bed. Gracefully, the tortured, bony pulp of Esmeralda's left limb extended over the bed to rub against Frollo's neck. The wet, soft flesh, stained his neck with dark blood, bone protrusions scraping along his skin. Frollo shut his eyes tight, his body shuddering with both revulsion and sick delight. He felt her one remaining toe flick his earlobe.

"Shall I dance for you?" she whispered.

Frollo made no reply. Horror claimed his contorting stomach as he ducked out from under the mince meat leg to slip in the blood that now pooled beneath him. Esmeralda leaned down to tremulously whimper, "Do you love me?"

The whimper seemed to echo in the dark, the words passing left and right through his brain. Frollo could reply nothing. He scrambled back as Esmeralda dragged herself from the bed to the floor with a sickening squelch.

"Do you love me?" she asked again, pitifully.

She dragged herself forward, on her hands, towards him, leg leaving a bloody smear behind her.

"Do you love me?"

Frollo's head collided with stone; he was backed against a wall.

"Do you love me?"

She moved ever closer.

"Do you love me?"

Her hand grasped his leg.

"Do you love me?"

"Yes!"

Darkness swamped over him. The gypsy, whispers and blood replaced by a black fug to cloud his sight before finally receding to reveal that he was no longer in his cell at Notre-Dame, but in a wide stone cavern; the ceiling stiflingly low, heat and light scorching forth from an iron furnace set into the wall.

Frollo was laid back on leather. He tried to move an arm, but couldn't; both wrists were strapped down tight above his head. It was when he tried to move his feet, to find one strapped down like his wrists and the other encased in iron, that Frollo realised where he was.

The place where Frollo had been, and encouraged, so many times before. The place sorcerers and witches were brought, and not let out, until they bled, screamed and confessed. The place known solely, by officials, as the "Question Chamber".

Frollo writhed upon the leather mattress. He had been in the chamber before; he knew the process well, knew the fate of the foot in the iron boot, knew that all was hopeless. Yet still he struggled against the leather bonds; heat from the furnace making him sweat, the black cloth of his cassock sticking to his skin.

One thing gave Frollo a drop of temporary hope: He was alone. There was no torturer in sight to twist the iron handle of the boot. There was still time.

Alone, Frollo thought, because he had not seen the sole, dark skinned figure that slowly swayed back and forth in the corner of the chamber. Bit by bit, it hobbled its way towards the perverted priest, collapsing halfway across the room to crawl the rest of the distance on its hands and knees.

When Esmeralda thrust her pretty head into the archdeacon's line of vision, Frollo turned white. She lowered her head over his, her dark eyes as enticing as ever, yet accompanied by the putrid reek of the grave.

She asked again, tones soft, "Do you love me?"

Her face so close to his, ignoring the dead stench and with nothing to lose, Frollo leant his head up to respond by trying to press his lips to hers. Esmeralda leaned quickly away, placing her hands around his neck to force his head back down to the leather mattress.

"Do you love me?"

Frollo could no longer contain it, "Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes!"

The iron handle of the boot twisted a half turn. Frollo winced as the metal plates clamped tighter around his leg.

"How much?" Esmeralda asked sweetly, her gentle smile betraying none of the situation.

Frollo no longer hesitated, "Like no other man has ever loved a woman!" The vice of the boot made another quarter turn. "To the very depths of my soul! With a fury to make the Earth shake. With enough fire to scorch the Heavens and reduce the pits of Hell to ash." The vice turned another half, causing him to cry out with pain. Still Frollo did not stop.

"I would do anything for you! Climb any mountain; break any law; give up everything I own if you just belonged to me. To always belong to me. To not want any other! I would pay anything, suffer anything for your love! I would starve for forty days just to taste your skin. Cut out my liver and eat it if it meant I could lie with you. Send my soul to burn in Hell just to hold you; touch you; kiss you; love-"

Frollo yelled out, back arching at the pain, as the vice tightened once more. The iron plates bit savagely into his leg, rupturing skin and blood vessels with a squeeze.

Esmeralda smiled, manoeuvring herself and her bloody stump to straddle his waist on the leather. Frollo, eyes clamped shut, teeth gritted against the pain, let out a snake-like hiss at the pressure. Her fingers drifted up his chest to undo the top buttons of his cassock, revealing the pale skin that lay beneath. Frollo's eyes opened a slit as she rested her palms against his bare chest.

She bent her head closer to whisper against his lips.

"Do you love me?"

Frollo looked up at her blankly. Didn't she understand?

"Girl, I'd break the back of love for you."

Her fingers dug into his skin, three deep slashes cutting across his chest, her other hand pinching the skin at his side; a wound like a knife thrust carved deep at the touch. Frollo howled in agony. Again, the iron boot tightened, a cracking sound piercing the air as Frollo's bone snapped and fractured under the pressure. His brain and body knew nothing but how to suffer. Face contorting, nails digging into his palms drawing blood, he writhed and spasmed on the bed of leather like a mad man.

Esmeralda smiled innocently above him. The pain did not relinquish; the vice wringing out every sour emotion that lay within him to burst out in a torrent.

"Do you-"

"I loathe you!" Frollo yelled. "Hate you! Despise you! Vile gypsy witch – you're the Devil's whore!" He released a groan of anguish, but didn't stop there, voice shaking with furious, desperate hate at the woman whose claws were hooked deep beneath his skin. "I want to see a rope around your neck, want to see you burn for evermore and cleanse myself - cleanse Paris - of your bewitchment. Drag you through the misery I've suffered every day knowing you're alive; break your mind, condemn your soul and shatter every bone in your body. You've taken me from Heaven, it's only right that I kick you into Hell!"

The pain finally overcame him. Frollo's vision blackened for him to lose all consciousness.

The last thing he heard, before darkness took him, was the sharp popping sound of dislocation, bone detaching from bone, skull broken from spine, and the feel of a body slumping, cold and limp, across his chest.

His soul was black ash. Hers snuffed out.


	9. The Girl

**The Girl**

Sleeping Paris was bathed in blue. The azure sky, pale and fresh, adorned with a crescent moon still lingering from the night. Wispy indigo clouds streaked across the sky, their undersides highlighted pink. The air in Paris was silent and still; crisp and cool. It was that moment in time where night transfers to morning, where twilight is put in reverse and the day is born afresh.

The bells tolled five in the morning. A boy walked alone through the streets.

His legs strode forcibly, rapidly, walking with head bent down and chin leaning upon his chest. Every step he took his look seemed to darken; the faint frown line on his forehead deepening, eyebrows dragging together until they made a stony ridge above his eyes. Yet, whether his face agreed or not, still the boy walked on without a hint of slowing. Certainly, this was no pointless stroll.

Finally, with a face still tense, the boy turned left into a narrow side street, turned left again, then came to an abrupt halt outside a building as ordinary as any other. The head of Claude Frollo snapped up to look about him. There was no one there. His brow loosened and stomach sank.

She wasn't here...

Just as Claude's head was lowering itself back upon his chest, two hands clapped on his shoulders to make him jump.

"Book boy!"

Claude spun round to find the girl standing behind him. She chuckled, "Made you jump?"

"No," Claude quickly lied.

At his denial, he expected her to grin, but she did not. Instead gazing at him with a smile of mild disbelief. She was dressed poorly as always and yet, as his eyes met her face, there seemed to be something different about her, but he couldn't say what. It didn't pass Claude's notice that she held in her left hand a brown paper bag that seemed to contain something tall and thin...

"Never thought you'd come, book boy," she said, breaking his pensive line of thought, and still looking upon him with incredulous eyes.

"Neither did I," Claude muttered.

He didn't know what else to say. Conversations with this girl were always awkward; laced with confusion, unclear meanings and general discomfort, usually accompanied by the wish to be somewhere else and - when he was somewhere else - the wish that things had been said differently. That morning, this was true more then ever, yet this meeting contained an element quite different from the others. It was not from necessity forced by lack of ink that he found himself near the girl. Instead, she'd ask him here...

And he - brooding or not - had come.

His stomach crunched with anticipation.

The girl, apparently, didn't know what to say either as she turned away from Claude to pick up a stone from the street, and fling it up to a high, glassless window at the top of a nearby building. The stone bounced off the window frame to fall back down to the street with a clatter.

"Damn," the girl muttered, "I was on nineteen as well. Just four away from Jacques' record."

At the mention of the name, Claude frowned darkly. He asked without thinking, "Do you like Jacques?"

The girl shrugged, "He's alright."

"He is a dull witted moron," Claude spoke, unable to suppress the obvious bitterness that laced his speech.

"All's fair then, 'cause he thinks you're an idiot too."

"Who do you agree with?"

She paused.

"Both."

Claude immediately opened his mouth to give a heated retort, but the girl grabbed his wrist, the contact causing his thoughts to flicker and cease in his throat.

"Come on, book boy. Or we'll miss it," she said impatiently, giving his wrist a tug

Claude allowed himself to be led around the side of the building to where a cart lay next to a stack of barrels just tall enough to reach the building's thatched roof. Letting go of his wrist, the girl jumped up onto the cart, from there climbing onto the barrels. Claude stood on the road watching her nimbly leap up to the top and onto the roof, all the time with one hand holding the brown paper bag.

"Come on, book boy! Up here for the best view!"

Claude grimaced, "Who does this house belong to?"

"Me."

Claude rolled his eyes, "No, it does not."

"Well, no one else seems to own it," the girl said defiantly, "Don't worry, I've been up here millions of times, we're not going to get caught."

Claude didn't reply, still in a state of undecided hesitation.

"Come on book boy," she called down to him. When he still didn't move, she added in a tone almost sly, "Jacques can do it."

Instantly, Claude climbed onto the cart. Carefully, he positioned himself to ascend the barrels, his hand reaching up to grip onto the thatching of the roof.

"No, don't hold that. You'll wreck the roof," the girl said, taking hold of his hand instead as Claude pulled himself up. Both safely upon the roof, they crawled up the side till they reached the top to sit, semi comfortably, upon the apex.

Claude felt the grip on his hand release as he looked to the east. Building's and rooftops stretched out into the distance to touch the sky line, the dark shadow of Notre-Dame standing tall to dominate Paris. What had minutes before been a pure, pale blue sky was now, at the lower reaches, bathed in pink, the colour transitioning into the blue through a band of white. As he watched, the first rays of golden light shone up from the horizon, the sun still unseen, the light piercing through the clouds, and tinting the pink undersides with a fluorescent glow.

Claude had seen the sun rise many times before through a window, but never had he seen it quite like this. Claude took in a breath at the morning vision that lay before him.

A rustling sound pulled his gaze rudely back to the girl that sat next to him. She had reached inside the paper bag to pull out a bottle of wine. On seeing the bottle, Claude couldn't help but frown in disapproval.

Catching his look, the girl smirked mischievously, "Swiped it from me Dad. He always keeps a stack of these for... emergency purposes. But he ain't going to miss just one."

Holding the bottle between her knees, she reached again into the bag to take out a metal implement and began to attempt to remove the cork.

"It is five in the morning."

"So?" the girl uttered between clenched teeth. The cork was getting the better of her. "It's just like church."

Claude's frown deepened at her response, but nevertheless he silently took the bottle from her to dig out the cork. He pried it out with surprising ease to offer her the bottle.

She smiled sheepishly at him, "You first."

"I do not drink."

"You are odd," she giggled.

"I simply do not like things to cloud my mind," Claude replied briskly, eyes fractionally narrowing at her as he said it. "Besides, drunkards belong to the Devil."

"Bit extreme though."

"What is?"

"To not drink at all."

Claude didn't hesitate in response, "Nothing is extreme to keep one's soul pure."

The girl shrugged, taking the bottle from him and taking a swig. "Makes it look nicer though."

Claude's brows knitted. The girl explained, "Y'know, life and such. Working in a shop every day 'till you get married, have a load of kids, then die," she grimaced, and took another swig. "A bit of wine makes that fate look nicer."

"Die and go to Heaven," Claude reminded.

"Or Hell."

"Yes. Thus, I do not drink."

On his remark, both fell into awkward silence. The fact that they lived in different worlds had become painfully obvious. Claude was the first to break it.

"You do not like working in the shop then?"

The girl gave him a bitter grin, "I hate it. Sweep floors and stack shelves all day. Adults who boss you around and think you're scum. And not a single person to talk to."

On the last part of her sentence, something that had been niggling away at the bottom of Claude's mind suddenly clunked into place.

"Is that why you were... so keen to talk to me?"

She paused, turning away from him, "S'pose so." Again she paused. "It's all different for you though... What'll you do when you've finished University?"

"I will never be finished with learning," he said simply.

The girl rolled her eyes, "You can't do school forever. I mean, what'll you work as?"

Frollo's brow furrowed. The answer to the question was obvious, yet he found himself reluctant to give it.

"A priest."

"You could do anythin', anythin' at all, and you want to be _a priest?_"

"My parents have always intended me to join the clergy..." He defended weakly, then speaking with vehement conviction, "Is there anything more important then saving Man's eternal soul?"

She shrugged, "S'pose so, but what about... science?"

"I will have all the time I could ever want to read and study. The life of a priest is perfect for me," he replied mechanically, voice emptying, as if the response had been long ground into him. As he finished his speech, Frollo's eyes held hers with stony defiance, as if daring the girl to again question his chosen occupation. Finally, Claude turned back to face the east, a discontented sigh passing his lips as he again looked to the horizon.

"Want some?"

He turned to the girl to find her holding out the bottle of wine to him. He eyed it suspiciously, then, with the forcibly rapid movement of someone who is about to take the plunge, he grabbed the bottle from her and took a sip. He paused... Then took a deep, rebellious glug. The girl watched him with a somewhat devilish glint at her eyes.

"Good?" she asked.

He licked his lips, "Revolting, vile and very, very disgusting."

"Ah, well, you see, me Dad values wine in quantity, not quality."

She watched as he took another deep glug, before pulling the bottle from his grasp, "Alrigh', don't drink the whole thing! Jesus, and I thought you said you didn't drink."

"Never... Do not tell Grégoire."

"Who?"

"No-one."

It was then that the girl pointed to the east.

That moment, the moment the blood red orb of the sun appeared on the horizon, rising above the Paris roofs, was when Claude realised what was different about the girl. Simply, she'd washed the grime off her face. Without it, and in the light of the newly born sun, she looked, Claude thought, quite pretty. No longer resembling a cat that had fallen down a chimney, she was left with a natural feline essence. An essence that caught his eyes completely.

Reflecting all this, watching her fixedly; little did Claude realise the silent intensity of his own gaze. His dark eyes with a depth far beyond his fifteen years. The girl met his eyes undaunted, glancing momentarily to the sun, turning from red to fire orange as it rose, before entwining her fingers carefully around his.

"No book to run off for this time," she whispered.

She moved her head slowly closer to his, pausing just an inch away to quickly lick her lips.

"You nervous book boy?"

He didn't blink.

"Yes."

Thought numb, he leant forwards to catch his lips on hers. The first touch stealing his breath, his eyes fluttered closed. The second touch, her lips parting with his to taste the bitter wine on her mouth. His fingers found her waist, her hands twisting naturally around his neck. Through it all, a single word swam through his mind.

_Wet_.

The girl giggled into his mouth.

"What?"

"Your eyebrows. They tickle."

Their lips again pressed together, more eager then before. The sun to the east ever rising, shining, the core white, illuminating the whole of Paris in golden light. Claude broke their lips, faces still touching to admire the gold that shone on his skin, raising his palm to the light.

"I understand."

She pressed a kiss to his ear, Claude's eyes still on the gold glowing in his palm.

"I understand why I like you," he repeated.

Frollo's palm closed around the intangible gold.

"Because I cannot have you. Because this could never happen. Would never happen."

She breathed into his ear, "Why not?"

"Because-"

"I don't mean then, I mean now."

Claude's lips found hers again to furiously feel, touch and sense against her mouth. His finger tips gracing her cheek and breathing deep. Her hands against his shoulder blades, holding him tight.

To kiss and be kissed: Claude had found divine bliss.

Once more, Claude dragged his lips away to ask what he should have asked weeks ago.

"What is your name?"

The girl smiled at him.

Her touch on his back faded, the feel of her skin on Claude's finger tips evaporating, the girl melting away to the sun light. Imagination was finally supplanted by memory. Claude sat on the rooftop, a book that wasn't there a moment ago, to appear, open, on his lap.

The girl was gone.

Alone, his hand stretched out to touch the gold of the morning sun.

Frollo breathed deep. Twitched. Rolled onto his back. His eyes opened to the blackness of night, to Notre-Dame, to the desolate solitude of his cell.

Frollo was hit by sour reality.

Awake, he tried to sit up to immediately hiss in pain. The self inflicted wounds of his chest, sore, oozing and infected, screamed in protest at the movement; dried blood and puss glued to his night shirt, the skin inflamed a painful red. Frollo dropped back down upon the mattress, closing his eyes to the pain for his mind to brim with images of the non reality.

He had tormenting dreams of moaning, scantily clad gypsies every night, but this? This was quite different. Frollo winced as he run a hand over his body and up his wounds.

_He would go to the prison tonight... _

Once more Frollo tried to sit up, his badly closed wounds protesting to force him to lie back against the sheets.

Yes, tonight he would go to her... but not yet.

Frollo's eyes again closed for impressions of the dream to swirl through his mind, suppressing the sour emotions that had ruled his mind for months. Frollo brought his fingers to touch his lips as he lay back against the bed, trying to hold on to it.

To preserve the dream; the imaginary girl and the kiss in the morning sun that never was.

**The End**


End file.
